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[[!meta title="org-gmail: A Deep Integration of Gmail into Your Org Mode"]]
[[!meta copyright="Copyright © 2025 Bala Ramadurai"]]
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# org-gmail: A Deep Integration of Gmail into Your Org Mode
Bala Ramadurai (he/him) - <https://balaramadurai.net>, <mailto:bala@balaramadurai.net>
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For many, email is the starting point for tasks, projects, and reference
material. While Emacs has powerful, full-featured mail clients like Gnus
and mu4e, they are designed to manage the entire email workflow.
org-gmail offers a different approach: it is not a replacement for a full
mail client, but a tool for deeply **integrating** your most important emails
into your Org Mode knowledge base.
This talk will introduce org-gmail, a package that allows users to fetch
entire Gmail threads or individual messages and save them as entries in Org
mode files. The core idea is to triage emails in the Gmail interface and
pull relevant threads into Org Mode, where they can be linked to tasks,
notes, and projects.
We will explore the key features of the package, including:
- Fetching emails by label and syncing new messages for previously downloaded labels.
- Managing labels directly from Emacs, including creating, deleting, editing, and bulk-moving threads between labels, which updates both Gmail and the corresponding :LABEL: properties in your Org files.
- Performing common email actions from within Org Mode, such as replying, forwarding (delegating), snoozing (deferring), and moving messages to the trash.
- Integrating emails into a task management workflow by creating actionable sub-tasks that appear in the agenda.
The session will demonstrate practical use cases for both Getting Things
Done (GTD) and the P.A.R.A. method (Tiago Forte). For GTD, we'll show how
to process a Gmail inbox, download actionable emails into an Org file, and
then defer, delegate, or create TODO items. For P.A.R.A., we'll demonstrate
how to label emails according to projects and areas, and how to archive
them systematically using the bulk-move feature.
By the end of the talk, attendees will understand the unique workflow
org-gmail enables and how it can help them turn their email into a
structured, actionable part of their Org Mode system.
About the speaker:
Bala Ramadurai is an entrepreneur, professor, author, coach, consultant,
and podcaster. He is the CEO of Spirelia, a company that helps innovate. He
has authored a book called Karmic Design Thinking and holds 3 patents.
In this talk, Bala will introduce org-gmail, a package he developed to
seamlessly integrate Gmail with Org Mode. You will learn how to transform
your important emails into actionable tasks and reference material,
leveraging the power of Org Mode for a more organized and productive
workflow that supports methodologies like GTD and P.A.R.A.
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