Well… it was fun while it lasted. The Quick Links feature from Gmail’s Labs is being retired soon. One of the more popular blog posts here introduces and explains Quick Links (about three years ago), but it’s now – sadly – time to say “goodbye.”
For some inexplicable reason, Google has decided to retire this very useful function, and if you click on one of your Gmail Quick Links, you’ll be presented with this pop-up:
Click to enlarge
I couldn’t find any reason why this decision was made, but to do my research I did some Google searching (of course.) That pretty much sums it up – Google is so powerful and prevalent it doesn’t need to explain. It knows I’m going to continue to use its products no matter how dissatisfied I am with any given decision.
What I did find, however, were two topics worth discussing. The first was, as mentioned in the above pop-up, the recommended solution for replacing the Quick Links feature. To do that, you simply click on each of your saved Quick Links and save the resulting bookmarks (the way you do for a traditional browser bookmark) one at a time. I chose to put them in a “Quick Links” folder on my Bookmark Toolbar:
The second solution I found only applies to users of Chrome. There’s a Gmail Quick Links extension available that seems to save frequently-used Gmail searches in a fashion similar to Quick Links from Gmail’s Labs. My browser choice is Firefox, so I can’t report on the efficacy of this Chrome extension, but it’s out there if you want to give it a try.
I’m sad to see Quick Links go, as are a lot of others based on the number of comments I’ve read from people searching for a replacement solution.
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