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Explaining Gmail Categories in Message and Label lists

A few days ago, a peer of mine in the Gmail and Google Accounts help communities, shared with me a link to a thread where a user happened to mention seeing the Update category label in his messages even after he has deselected the categories in his default Gmail layout from the Inbox tab under Gmail settings.

The user also included screenshots which looked like the ones below:




Given how most of our Gmail is set up, this appeared odd. The categories are not labels; so, how could they appear as such?

Since the categories appeared as labels, it was apparent that the reason for this uncommon behavior should lie inside the Labels tab under Gmail settings.

In there, scrolling down below the System labels section, under Categories, it appeared as seen below, and the highlighted section resolved the mystery.


The click to show/hide in message list options, set to show, caused this unusual display of categories as labels in the user's inbox. When I clicked "Show" for the Promotions category, the one previously unlabelled message from the first screenshot showed up with the Promotions label.


"What does the Show in label list do then?", some would ask.


It simply places category labels above or below the More/Less marker in the Gmail label list in the left panel depending on whether they are set to show or hide. The screenshots below should help better explain this.

When all categories are set to show, all labels are displayed above the More marker.


When all category labels are set to hide, they are hidden from the displayed label list and can only be seen upon clicking the More marker circled in the first screenshot below.



If some categories are set to show and some set to hide, they are displayed accordingly above and below the More/Less marker.


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