Choose what happens when you swipe an email on your phone, and which buttons appear on emails and conversations. Each swipe direction can hold up to two actions: Archive, Delete, Mark as read, Star or Snooze. Swipes work differently on iPhone and Android, and the desktop app has hover buttons instead.
Steps
Desktop
Open Settings: press ⌘, on Mac, or Ctrl+, on Windows and Linux.
Go to the General tab.
Under Inbox quick actions, click a slot in Hover actions and choose an action, or None to clear it. These buttons appear when you hover over an email in the list.
Under Quick actions on thread screen, do the same for Thread toolbar actions, the buttons at the top of an open conversation.
iPhone & iPad
Open the menu and tap the Settings gear at the bottom.
Tap Swipe actions.
Under Right swipe or Left swipe, tap Add action and pick one. Tap ✕ to remove an action.
Touch and hold an action's handle to drag it. The bottom action of each side is the one a full swipe runs.
A short swipe shows all the buttons for that side; a full swipe runs the last one.
Android
Open the menu and tap the Settings gear at the bottom.
Tap Swipe actions.
Under Right swipe or Left swipe, tap Add action and pick one. Tap ✕ to remove an action.
Touch and hold an action's handle to drag it. The first action runs on a short swipe, the second on a long swipe.
While you swipe, the color and icon show what will happen when you let go. Gray means nothing will happen.
To change the buttons under an open conversation on your phone, go to Settings › General › Thread actions. The first 3 actions show in the bar; the rest are in the ••• menu.
Good to know
By default, swiping left archives and swiping right deletes.
The phone's thread actions and the desktop's Thread toolbar actions are one setting: change it in either place and both follow.
In Recap, swiping right always marks an email Done and swiping left always picks Later.
An action that would do nothing in the current folder, such as archiving in Archive, doesn't run there.