How do I add labels in Gmail?

Last reviewed: September 22, 2026 · Markdown version

A label is a tag you put on a message, and Gmail lets you create up to 5,000 of them. That number is from Google's own help page Create labels to organize Gmail (read 22 September 2026), and it tells you something about the design: labels are meant to be cheap. You are not supposed to agonise over one.

Creating one

On the web, the label list runs down the left side; scroll to the bottom of it and choose Create new label, give it a name, and save. Google's page describes the same flow and one option worth knowing about at creation time: you can "include your label in another label" by ticking Nest label under, which is how you get Work → Invoices rather than two unrelated tags.

In the mobile apps the list is behind the menu button, and label management is thinner than on the web — creating and applying work, but the fiddlier settings are a desktop job.

Applying one to mail you already have

Select the messages, then use the label button in the toolbar. The useful habit is to run a search first and label the results, rather than hunting message by message: from:, subject:"order confirmation" and category:promotions are Google's documented operators (Search operators you can use with Gmail, read 22 September 2026), and a label applied to a search you have just read is a label you have already checked.

Colour, and the second published number

A label can be given a colour from the same More menu you use to edit or remove it. Google documents a ceiling here too: you can create "up to 100 custom colors". In practice four or five carry all the meaning a colour can carry; past that it is decoration that slows you down.

The thing to know before you build a system

Google's page states it in one line: "Labels are different from folders." A message lives in one place but can carry several labels at once, and removing a label does not move or delete the message. That is why labels survive contact with real mail where a folder tree does not — but it is also why a label alone never reduces anything. What labels are actually good for is a different question from this one, and worth reading before you make forty of them.

Making them apply themselves

Labelling by hand scales to about a week. The standing version is a filter: build it from a search you trust, and Gmail applies the label to matching mail from then on, with a checkbox to apply it to existing mail too. How filters work, and what they cannot do.

Where we fit

Labels file mail. They do not reduce it, and an inbox that needs 5,000 labels usually needs fewer senders instead. Adinand Email Cleaner groups Gmail by sender so you can see who is actually filling it, delete in bulk by sender, and turn the recurring cases into auto-trash rules — which are real Gmail filters, created through Gmail's own API and running inside Gmail itself, so they keep working even if you delete the app. Three of them on the free tier, unlimited on Pro.