Your inbox, actually sortable.
Gmail has been around for 20 years and you still can't sort by sender. Or by subject. Or collapse every email from noreply@anything into a single row. Sift does all three, in one click, right inside the Gmail toolbar you already use.
- No login, no analytics, no servers
- Reads only the Gmail tab you have open
- Open source — ~600 lines of vanilla JS
You opened Gmail at 9 a.m. with 8,000 emails. Now what?
Gmail's search is excellent. Its browsing tools are stuck in 2004. Here are the moments where every Gmail user feels it.
"I just want everything from my landlord."
You can search a sender, sure. But you can't sort the current inbox by sender, so spotting a single thread among 200 daily emails means scrolling forever.
"Show me the oldest unread."
Gmail sorts by date by default — but only one direction, and only on the unfiltered view. Switch to a label and you're out of options.
"I want to bulk-clear all the LinkedIn noise."
47 LinkedIn notifications scattered across last week's inbox. There's no way to group them visually so you can scan once and delete in one swipe.
"What was that subject line again?"
Search needs the right keyword. Sometimes you only remember "it had the word 'invoice' near the start." Alphabetical subject sort would find it in two seconds.
One toolbar. Three controls. Done.
Sift slips into Gmail's existing toolbar — same look, same place, no new tabs to manage.
Pick a field
Sender, Subject, Date or Unread first. The dropdown sits beside Gmail's own controls.
Cycle the direction
Click once for ascending, again for descending, again to restore the original. No "undo" needed.
Group when it's noise
Toggle "Group by sender" to collapse 47 LinkedIn emails into one expandable row with a count badge.
What's in the box
Multi-field sort
Sender, Subject, Date, or Unread first. Each field uses Gmail-aware extractors with six layers of selector fallbacks.
Group by sender
Collapsible group headers with count badges. One click hides the noise, another brings it back.
Tri-state cycle
Original → Ascending → Descending → Original. Your inbox always has a way home.
Per-view memory
Each label remembers its own sort. Inbox can be by Date while "Receipts" stays grouped by Sender.
Visible failures
If Gmail's DOM changes and a selector breaks, you get a toast — not a silent dead button.
Open source & auditable
Vanilla JS, no build step, no dependencies. Read the entire source in one sitting — it's about 600 lines.
Native Gmail vs. Sift
Out of the box
- ✕ No sort by sender
- ✕ No sort by subject
- ✕ No grouping by sender
- ✕ No way to find the oldest unread
- ✕ Settings hidden, search-only
With Sift
- ✓ Sort by Sender, Subject, Date, or Unread
- ✓ Tri-state cycle restores original anytime
- ✓ Collapsible groups with count badges
- ✓ Per-label memory between sessions
- ✓ Lives in the toolbar — zero new UI to learn
Install in 60 seconds
Sift isn't on the Chrome Web Store yet — and that's by design while it's still being polished. Loading it as an "unpacked extension" takes one minute.
- Download the source. From GitHub — click the green "Code" button → "Download ZIP", then unzip it.
-
Open
chrome://extensionsPaste that into your address bar. - Enable Developer Mode Toggle in the top-right corner.
- Click "Load unpacked" Pick the unzipped Sift folder.
- Open Gmail. You'll see new controls in the toolbar above your inbox. That's it.
Your inbox stays in your browser.
No account, no servers, no analytics, no telemetry. Sift only requests activeTab + storage permissions and host_permissions for mail.google.com. It reads the email rows you're already looking at, sorts them in the DOM, and saves your sort preference in chrome.storage.local on your machine.
Don't take our word for it — the entire source is on GitHub and short enough to read end-to-end.
Frequently asked
Does Sift actually sort the emails on Google's servers?
No. Sorting is purely visual — it reorders the rows in your browser. As soon as Gmail re-renders (e.g. you click into a thread and back), the original order returns. That's also why it's safe: there's nothing to "undo" on Google's side.
What happens if Gmail changes its HTML?
Sift uses multiple fallback selectors at every DOM interaction point — five for the toolbar, four for rows, six for sender info. If all fallbacks fail, you'll see a toast notification rather than a dead button. Gmail's DOM is famously fragile, so the design assumes it will break and tries to fail loudly.
Will it work on Gmail for Workspace / G Suite accounts?
Yes. Sift targets https://mail.google.com/*, which covers personal, Workspace, and most custom-domain Gmail accounts.
Does it work in Firefox or Safari?
Not yet. Sift is a Chrome extension (Manifest V3), so it works in Chrome, Edge, Brave, Arc, and other Chromium browsers. Firefox port is on the roadmap.
Will it slow Gmail down?
Sift's MutationObservers are scoped to just the toolbar and email-list containers — not the whole page — so the runtime overhead is negligible. Sort itself touches only the rows currently in the DOM, which is at most ~50 at a time in Gmail.
How is Sift different from Gmail's own "Sort by"?
Gmail doesn't have one. The closest thing is search operators like from:amazon.com, but those filter, they don't sort. You can't ask Gmail to put all senders in alphabetical order, or to group emails into collapsible piles by sender. That's the gap Sift fills.
Why is Sift called "for Gmail" and not just "Gmail Sort"?
Google's brand guidelines disallow third-party products from using "Gmail" in the product name itself, but explicitly allow "for Gmail" as a descriptor. So Sift is the product, and "for Gmail" is the surface it works on.
Stop scrolling. Start sifting.
Free, open source, and 60 seconds away from a tidier inbox.