Most people who want to sort Gmail by sender want one of two things: to see everything from one person or company in one place, or to deal with a pile of mail from the same few senders at once. Gmail can do both, but not by re-ordering the inbox. It does it with search. And if what you really want is mail grouped by who sent it and what it is, every day, Sortmail does that as each message lands.
Gmail sorts by date, and search does the rest
Gmail lists your mail newest first, and there are no column headers to click as there are in a desktop mail program. You cannot switch the inbox to sender order or subject order. What you can do is narrow the list to exactly the mail you want with a search, then act on all of it at once. The steps below work in Gmail in a desktop browser, and the same search words work in the search box of the Gmail apps.
How to sort Gmail by sender
The quick way
Right-click any message in your inbox and choose "Find emails from" followed by the sender’s name. Gmail shows every message from that address, newest first.
With a search
Type from: followed by an address, a name or a whole domain. The domain version catches every address a company sends from:
from:[email protected]from:(example.com)To see several senders together, put OR between them, in capitals:
from:(example.com OR example.org)Act on everything from one sender
- Run the search for the sender.
- Tick the checkbox at the top left of the list to select the page.
- Click "Select all conversations that match this search".
- Archive, label or mark as read in one step. Archiving is safer than deleting: the mail stays in All Mail.
Gmail has no view that groups the whole inbox by sender or counts how much each sender has sent you. To find your noisiest senders, scroll the last fortnight with in:inbox newer_than:14d and note the names that repeat.
How to sort Gmail by date
The inbox is already in date order, newest first. To jump to your oldest mail, click the message count at the top right of the list, such as "1–50 of 4,210", and choose Oldest. To see a date range, search with after: and before:, using year/month/day:
after:2026/01/01 before:2026/02/01For mail older or newer than a period, use older_than: or newer_than: with d for days, m for months or y for years:
in:inbox older_than:1yOn a results page, the "Any time" button under the search bar does the same with a menu.
How to sort Gmail by subject
Search the subject line with subject:. Put phrases in quotes, and group alternatives with OR:
subject:(invoice OR receipt OR "order confirmation")This is the fastest way to gather every invoice or booking confirmation, whoever sent it. It misses senders who word things differently, so check a few pages before you act on the results.
How to sort Gmail by size
Useful when storage runs low. Gmail’s free storage is shared with Google Drive and Google Photos, and a few large attachments can take more room than years of text. Search by size with larger:, smaller: or size:, using M for megabytes:
has:attachment larger:10MCombine them
The search words stack, so one line can sort by sender, date and size at once. For example, every large attachment from one company in the past year:
from:(example.com) has:attachment larger:5M newer_than:1yWhere sorting by hand stops
Search is a good tool for one clear-out. It is a poor way to keep an inbox in order:
- Every sort is a one-off view. Tomorrow the inbox is back in date order, with new mail from the same senders on top.
- You have to know who to search for. The receipt from a shop you bought from for the first time yesterday is not in any search you have saved.
- Sender is the wrong key for much of your mail. One company sends you invoices, newsletters and security alerts from the same domain, and they need different handling.
- Filters that make a search permanent match only what you anticipated, and break when a sender changes address or wording.
- All of it is upkeep. The searches only help on the days you remember to run them.
Sorted by sender and kind, as mail lands
Sortmail sorts every new message by what it is, into five categories: Actionable, Personal, Receipts, Newsletters and System. You can rename them or add your own, up to 8. Actionable and Personal stay in your inbox. The rest are labelled and archived, under ordinary Gmail labels you can open whenever you want them.
- Sender is remembered for you. Move one message from a sender to the right category and every later message from that sender follows it.
- New senders need no search. A first receipt from a new shop goes to Receipts on arrival.
- One company, several kinds of mail. Its invoices, newsletters and alerts can each go to the right place, because Sortmail looks at the message, not only the address.
- Every decision shows its reason, and a daily digest at the hour you choose lists what was filed and why.
- Nothing is deleted or sent. Every move can be undone.
See your own mail sorted
Connect a mailbox and Sortmail sorts the last 30 days of your inbox (up to 1,000 messages) free, showing where each message would go and why. It is a preview rather than a trial: nothing is written to your mailbox, no labels and no archiving, until you choose a plan. You judge it on your own mail before you pay anything.
One plan, with every feature in it: $79 a year or $139 for 2 years at the founding price, limited to the first 250 subscribers and locked for as long as the subscription runs, or $12.99 a month. A year costs less than 8 months of monthly, and 2 years less than 14. After the founding seats it is $99 a year or $169 for 2 years. Cancel in one click in Billing.