Source: Gmail

Do you think you wait longer than you should for Gmail to load? That is the time from you clicking the “Sign in” button to show your inbox. If you ask me that, I’d say yes! Why, you may ask. It’s because Gmail used to load much faster for me, of course. What really has changed then? Nothing much from Google’s side other than them reducing the number of HTTP requests to four, which should speed up the loading time. As such, the change to reduce the loading time could come from our side. There are few tweaks you can do to speed up Gmail loading time.

1. Turn off unused Gmail Lab features
As much as Lab features provide extra value to the whole email experience, it could slow down the loading time. This is due to additional HTTP requests it has to send to load these additional features. Therefore turn off the unused Lab features. It is best to turn off experimental Lab features, unless you really want them.

2. Reduce the number of emails showed on a page
By default Gmail shows 25 emails when it loads. You can change this to 50 or 100 by going to Settings -> Genera -> Maximum page size. Leaving it at a lower number will speed up the loading time. If you want most of your emails to show, try labeling them instead.

3. Remove/disable unused web browser plugins
Most commonly used browsers allow to install 3rd party plugins that could increase productivity. These plugins use computer’s memory and sometimes your Interned bandwidth. That could slow down not only your gmail loading time but other online and offline activities. Therefore, if it’s best to remove the plugins that you don’t use.

4. Enable web browser cache
Web browser cache is where your browser store images, flash components etc on your computer for faster loading. So when you visit a website for the second time and after, it will pull these components from your computer instead of the remote web server, which will save you bandwidth and speed up loading times. This affects all websites including Gmail.

5. Turn off chat
If you are using Gtalk or a multi-protocol chat client such as Pidgin to chat with Gmail chat buddies, turn off the chat feature on your Gmail. This can be found at the bottom of the page. By doing so Gmail doesn’t have to load your chat buddies when you login.

6. Add “?nocheckbrowser” argument
You can add the “?nocheckbrowser” argument to the URL to speed up the Gmail loading time significantly. The URL would look like this:
https://mail.google.com/gmail?nocheckbrowser

7. Turn on HTML mode
HTML mode will load Gmail much faster without the eye candy. That is you won’t see the nice styling or theme you have but your emails in plain HTML. You can find it at the bottom of the page, or at borrom right when Gmail loads. Alternatively you can change it via Settings. It is good if you are in a hurry to check emails. HTML mode URL look like this:
https://mail.google.com/mail/h/

8. User mobile mode
As the name suggest, mobile mode is how Gmail is shown on a mobile phone. It is very basic and shows your emails much faster. Try it using below URL:
https://mail.google.com/mail/x/

9. Use a desktop email client
You can configure Gmail to work with a desktop email client such as Thunderbird or Windows Mail. By doing so you can download the emails to your email client like you would do with non-web based emails.

Have I missed any other tweaks to speed up the Gmail loading time? Share in the comments section below.

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Tags: Browsers, Email, Gmail, Productivity