---
title: "Inbox tabs for your email"
description: "Sort your inbox into Primary, Promotions, Updates, Social and Forums by plain rules. Mail from people comes first, and alerts can stay on Primary."
url: "https://openemail.uk/features/inbox-tabs"
---

[Reading & organising](https://openemail.uk/features.md#reading)

# Inbox tabs Mail from people comes first.

Turn on Sort the inbox into tabs in your account settings and the inbox splits into Primary, Promotions, Updates, Social and Forums. Mail from people stays in Primary, and offers and receipts wait in tabs of their own.

[Open mail](https://openemail.uk/mail/inbox) [Get Started](https://openemail.uk/signup.md)[All features](https://openemail.uk/features.md)

In short

## What are inbox tabs?

Inbox tabs split one inbox into separate lists by the kind of mail, so a message from a person is not buried under offers and receipts. Here there are five, and a conversation is always in exactly one of them, decided by its newest message.

How it works

## Sorted by plain rules

Mail from your contacts, from people you have written to and in conversations you take part in is Primary. Marketing mail goes to Promotions, receipts, codes and no-reply notices to Updates, social networks to Social and mailing lists to Forums. No AI is involved, and it costs nothing.

## Choose a tab for a sender

The menu of a conversation has “Always show mail from”, followed by the sender’s address and the five tabs. Pick a tab, and that sender’s inbox conversations move there and their new mail follows. Saved choices are listed in settings, where each can be removed.

## Alerts for Primary only

Alert me for Primary only is on from the start. Pushes, sounds and desktop notifications fire for mail in Primary, and mail in the other tabs arrives quietly.

What you get

## In the product today

A count on every tab

Each tab shows its unread count, and the Inbox badge counts Primary.

Search one tab

Add category:promotions to a search and it looks in that tab only.

From code as well

The REST API, the SDKs, the command line and the MCP server can list a tab and save a choice for a sender.

Good practice

## Getting the most out of it

1. 01
   
   Fix a sender once
   
   When a sender lands in the wrong tab, choose a tab for them. The choice holds for everything they send next.
2. 02
   
   Keep alerts on Primary
   
   Leave Alert me for Primary only on, so an offer or a receipt never interrupts you.
3. 03
   
   Read the other tabs in one go
   
   Promotions and Updates can wait. Open them when you have a minute, and their unread counts tell you how much is there.

Questions

## Asked often

Keep going

## Works well with

Labels

Name a label, pick a colour, and filter the list down to it.

Rules you write yourself

Your own conditions, and what should happen to anything that matches them.

Subscriptions

Every newsletter and mailing list that writes to you, in one place to unsubscribe from, file away or block.

Start

## Your domain, your mail.

Point a domain at OpenEmail and read it in a mailbox built around it. The free plan covers one domain.

[Open mail](https://openemail.uk/mail/inbox) [Get Started](https://openemail.uk/signup.md)[Read the reference](https://openemail.uk/docs/knowledge/reading/inbox-tabs.md)