How to get a ringtone alert for important emails in Gmail

Gmail users receive hundreds of emails every day. Most are advertisements, and work emails are comparatively few. In such a crowd, it often happens that an important email is overlooked.

One cannot keep watching the inbox all the time to make sure nothing is missed. A simple trick helps here. If you are waiting for an important email and do not want it to get lost in the crowd, you can set an alert for that particular sender. When such an email arrives, a ringtone plays at once and you are informed.

The setting has to be done in two stages: first a label and a filter, then the alert. To begin with, create a label in Gmail. Next to the Labels option there is a plus (+) sign. Click it, name the label and create it. Then open Gmail on a computer.

The next step is to click the filter option on the right side of the search bar. A box named From will appear on the screen. Type into it the email address from which mails are important to you. Then click Create filter.

Two options will appear here: "Apply the label" and "Always mark it as important". Under "Apply the label", the name of the label you made earlier will show; select it. Then select "Always mark it as important" as well, and tap Create filter again. After this, any mail that arrives from the address you entered will show in the inbox and also under the label you created.

Now the alert has to be set. On the computer, a settings option appears beside the search bar. Click it and choose "See all settings". Then tap General and scroll down. Click Desktop notifications there and select "Important mail notifications on".

The Mail notification sound option also appears at the same place. Pick a ringtone you like from the list. After this, the ringtone will play as soon as a mail arrives from the specific email ID you chose. You will therefore know at once that the email you were waiting for may have arrived.