Gmail is adding a Purchases tab that will organize your order confirmations, shipping alerts and delivery updates in one neat view. With The Goods, instead of sifting through marketing messages and random subject lines, you get a single place to check out all your purchased goods, what’s on its way and what just arrived at your doorstep — both on the web and mobile.
The new tab resides in the left-side pane next to familiar labels such as Starred, Important, Manage subscriptions and Scheduled. AdvertisingIt complements the “package arriving soon” cards that already might show up at the top of your inbox, but it goes further by briefly listing purchases with delivery dates days and even weeks away.
What the Purchases tab does
Open the tab and you get a view of all purchase-related emails in one feed: order receipts, shipment notifications, tracking updates and delivery confirmations. Each entry yanks important details to the forefront — merchant, item summary and status– so you don’t have to open three separate messages to cobble together your progress.
If you order from multiple retailers in the same week, it’s convenient to be able to see all at a glance.
You could think of it as a lightweight package tracker baked into your inbox, whether you’re waiting on a backordered laptop or keeping an eye on the delivery of school supplies.
Where to find it and how to use
On desktop: Find “Purchases” in Gmail’s left-hand navigation. On mobile, access the side menu via the hamburger icon; one of your labels is buried in all that other stuff. You don’t need to set up anything — Gmail will automatically recognize messages about purchases and thread them together for you.
You can still handle messages how you always have. Starring receipts, adding custom labels and snoozing a shipping notice until the day it’s landing are only a tap away. If you’re in inbox-triage mode, the close-at-hand “Manage subscriptions” area is useful for pruning retailers you no longer care to hear from.
Why this is important for harried shoppers
Online shopping isn’t slowing down. U.S. consumers spent more than a trillion dollars online in the last full year, according to Adobe’s Digital Economy Index, and that volume is a flood of order and delivery emails. Transactional messages such as receipts and tracking updates also enjoy unusually high engagement — email researchers at Litmus have for a long time said that they can see open rates multiples higher than marketing campaigns — because people actually want the information inside.
Centralizing those messages is important when you’re managing multiple shipments or return windows. It lowers the chances you might miss an “out for delivery” alert, and can help you spot crucial updates — a revised backorder estimate or RMA deadline — before your window of action closes.
Promotions tab is also smarter
Gmail is also tweaking its Promotions tab with an optional “most relevant” sort that places senders you interact with near the top. You’ll find soft pushes for expiring deals and time-sensitive offers instead of a criteria-based “old to new” linear list. If you like the old behavior, where it shows “most recent,” you can switch back to that at any time.
This is in line with a larger movement among email clients to bucket high-volume content. Apple Mail, for example, brought a Transactions category to the fore to show receipts and confirmations; Gmail’s take on this is trying to emulate that same clarity without shooing you out of your inbox or adopting a new workflow.
Privacy and control: what’s going on under the hood
To populate the Purchases view, Google analyzes the contents of purchase-related emails and pulls out structured data such as order numbers and expected delivery dates. Google says consumer Gmail content isn’t used to personalize ads, and you can change how much Gmail serves as a source of assistance with these features in Settings under “Smart features and personalization,” if you have concerns.
If you don’t want to see certain things in Purchases, archiving or deleting the email behind item will remove it from the tab. Your Google Account also contains a Payments and subscriptions section that you can use to view, update, or delete purchase information obtained from receipts.
Tips for power users
Set up a “Returns” label and assign it to messages with words such as “return label,” “refund,” or even “RMA” so that those deadlines don’t get lost in the shuffle.
Filters can also mark emails with tracking numbers or specific carriers, allowing you to make rapid pivots by package inside search.
Use Snooze to make a delivery email reappear on the day of expected arrival or a week before the window for returning closes.
And even if you depend on a dedicated tracking app (such as Shop, or USPS Informed Delivery or carrier notifications) the new tab adds value here as being a neutral ledger across all retailers and carriers.
For buyers, that can also serve as a lightweight audit trail. Star invoices as they come in, then filter star items in Purchases at the end of the month and you’re done reconciling expenses — no additional tools needed.
Bottom line
Gmail’s Purchases tab is a simple improvement that addresses an actual problem millions of us encounter every day: searching for orders across dozens of retailers because the original email ended up buried in your inbox. Both that and smarter Promotions sorting paints its shoppers a clearer picture of what is important now — and helps make sense of the email avalanche the modern e-commerce age generates.