Tonight I clicked on the Report Spam button in Gmail to end getting an email that had no unsubscribe link at the bottom and instead Gmail suggested I MUTE the conversation.
I was intrigued. "Sure" I said and clicked it.
The message was gone.
So... I did some research...
It turns out that Gmail has blessed it's users with a feature called Mute – you can use this to simply do a Mute on any message and push the entire conversation to the archive. And the best part? All future conversations (Reply, Forward, Reply All) on that thread would bypass your inbox and be moved to archive automatically. Thus, you will no longer have to view or give attention to such messages.
Steps to Mute a Conversation in Gmail
Note that the Mute action needs to be performed on any one message from the entire thread. That would apply the rule to the entire conversation.
Step 1: Log in to your account and navigate to inbox.
Step 2: On the inbox, select one or more messages. Then click on More menu and choose the Mute option.
Or, if you are already reading a message, click on More menu and click on Mute. If you have the keyboard shortcuts enabled for Gmail then you may simply hit the “M” key instead of touching on More -> Mute.
Cool Tip: To quickly check the list of keyboard shortcuts for Gmail, just do Shift + ? on your keyboard.
You may also open a message and do this. Or on an open message you can simply hit on that cross appearing against Muted on the top of the message.
Just to relieve yourself from the All Mail clutter, you may search the mails by typing is:muted on the search box. On the results, you may do any of the above.
Pretty cool, huh? Remember to always use your power for good, not evil.