GMail has a simple keyboard shortcut to delete email messages ? The same key combination works across all web browsers but for some reason, Google decided not to share it with GMail users.
If you are reading a message in GMail, press the # key (Shift+3) and that message will instantly move to Trash.
Alternatively, select one or more email messages in the GMail list view, press the same # hash key and all the selected GMail conversations will be deleted in one batch.
We tested this on Internet Explorer and Firefox but it should work just fine on Opera, Safari and other browsers.
Update: If the GMail delete key isn't working for you, make sure that you have switched on the shortcuts from GMail settings page.
Use Gmail Generate Unlimited E-mail Addresses
Gmail has an interesting quirk where you can add a plus sign (+) after your Gmail address, and it'll still get to your inbox. It's called plus-addressing, and it essentially gives you an unlimited number of e-mail addresses to play with. Here's how it works: say your address is pinkyrocks@gmail.com, and you want to automatically label all work e-mails. Add a plus sign and a phrase to make it pinkyrocks+work@gmail.com and set up a filter to label it work (to access your filters go to Settings->Filters and create a filter for messages addressed to pinkyrocks+work@gmail.com. Then add the label work).
More real world examples:
Find out who is spamming you: Be sure to use plus-addressing for every form you fill out online and give each site a different plus address.
Example: You could use
pinkyrocks+nytimes@gmail.com for nytimes.com
pinkyrocks+freestuff@gmail.com for freestuff.com
Then you can tell which site has given your e-mail address to spammers, and automatically send them to the trash.
Automatically label your incoming mail: I've talked about that above.
Archive your mail: If you receive periodic updates about your bank account balance or are subscribed to a lot of mailing lists that you don't check often, then you can send that sort of mail to the archives and bypass your Inbox.
Example: For the mailing list, you could give pinkyrocks+mailinglist1@gmail.com as your address, and assign a filter that will archive mail to that address automatically. Then you can just check in once in a while on the archive if you want to catch up.
Update (9/7): Several commentors have indicated that this is not a Gmail specific trick. kl says Fastmail has enabled this feature as well. caliban10 reports that a lot of sites reject addresses with a plus sign. You might use other services like Mailinator for disposable addresses instead. pbinder recommends using services like SpamGourmet, which redirects mail to your real address.
