How to Create & Use Canned Responses in Gmail

Whether it's time for fun things like playing outside with our kids, time for the gym, or time to Netflix and chill, we all want a little more time in our day. We can't get more time, but we can use our time efficiently. One way to do that is to zip through email with the help of smart replies and canned responses in Gmail (G Suite for Edu email).

Smart Replies are those automated suggestions that appear when you're writing a response in to message in Gmail. Canned Responses are slightly different. Canned Responses are messages that you compose and then save to re-use whenever you want. Watch my new video to learn how you can create and use Canned Responses in Gmail.

How to Enable or Disable Gmail "Smart Replies"

Smart Reply is one of my favorite features to come with the "new" Gmail that was thrust upon all users earlier this year. Smart Reply takes the context of the email message to which you are replying and what you have already typed to form a suggested completion to your sentence. These predictions appear in gray text as you type. To utilize the prediction just tap the tab key on your keyboard. And if you don't like the suggested text, just keep typing to ignore it. I use Gmail's Smart Reply function many times throughout the day as it does save me a few minutes crafting replies to emails.

If you haven't tried Smart Reply in Gmail (including Gmail accounts managed as part of G Suite for Education), you can enable it in your Gmail settings panel. To open your settings simply click on the gear icon that appears in the upper, right corner of your inbox (on a desktop or Chromebook). You will find Smart Reply about 2/3 of the way down the settings page.

Not everyone likes Smart Reply. If you're annoyed by the constant suggestions while you're typing an email, simply disable the feature from the same settings menu as is used to enable it.