Gmail categories (as opposed to labels) are not synced between Gmail and third party apps like Missive that use an IMAP connection. However, it is still possible to take advantage of Gmail’s smart categorizing by using rules to filter out promo emails and such from your Inbox into custom labels.
First create two Gmail labels, Feeds and Ads & Social. Then set two Gmail rules:
- Move emails categorized as "Promotions" and "Social" to Ads & Social
- Move emails categorized as "Updates" and "Forums" to Feeds
Once this is done, you can open these labels on Missive and keep them pinned to your left bar to see the unread count of each. This allows you to have these “secondary inboxes” for less important stuff.
Walkthrough
If you aren’t familiar with Gmail filters, here are the instructions to achieve the result described above.
First step is to create the Ads & Social label, as shown here:
Create the filter to automatically move emails to this new label. Type this in the Gmail search field:
(category:promotions OR category:social)
Then click the little grey arrow on the right and click on Create filter at the bottom:
Check the next boxes:
Repeat step 1 for a new label named Feeds
Finally, repeat step 2 but with the following search text:
(category:updates OR category:forums)
That’s it. This trick basically allows you to take advantage of Gmail’s smart categorizing without being confined to the Gmail interface.
