If you want to enhance your productivity as you browse through your emails, you can do just that. Sometimes, you might not have the time to open each email to understand what it's about. So, what can you do?

Luckily, Gmail’s reading pane allows you to preview your emails without having to open them, and at any moment, you can have this feature enabled or disabled. Here, we’ll show you how to manage the feature.

How to Enable Gmail's Reading Pane

Managing your reading pane is a unique Gmail feature that will improve how you browse through your inbox. Managing this feature is quite simple, and just requires you to change your settings. You can use this feature to increase your productivity in Gmail.

To enable the reading pane, here's what you have to do:

  1. Open Gmail, and login to your account.
  2. Click on the Settings gear in the top-right corner of the page.
    Settings menu in Gmail
  3. Select See all settings.
  4. Go to the Inbox section.
    Enabling reading pane in Gmail
  5. Head to Reading pane, and check the box next to Enable reading pane.
  6. Scroll down, and select Save Changes.

How to Manage the Gmail Reading Pane

After you’ve enabled the reading pane, you also need to know to manage it. To do that, follow these steps:

  1. Head to your inbox.
  2. In the top-right corner of Gmail. Click on the drop-down arrow next to the Toggle split pane mode icon.
    Managing your Gmail reading pane
  3. Choose between Vertical split and Horizontal split. Your decision will be based on whether you want your reading pane to appear on the right side of the inbox page or on the bottom half of the page.
  4. Click on the Toggle split pane mode in the top-right corner icon to remove your reading pane or to make it appear.
    Gmail reading pane view

Quickly View Emails From the Reading Pane

Viewing emails from the reading pane helps you avoid having to open a new page for an email that you could've skimmed through in seconds. Luckily, the instructions provided in this article will help you manage the reading pane. And if you're looking for extra Gmail functionality, there are plenty of extensions that can help.