GMail already knocks rival webmail services into a cocked hat with its speed, storage capacity and breadth of features. However, there are plenty more power tools lurking in the ever fertile GMail Labs, which can help you tailor the service to your own needs.

To access GMail Labs, click on the little green science beaker icon next to your email address at the top of the GMail window.

1. Quick Links

Quick Links is an excellent tool for power users. It allows you to create one-click shortcuts to specific searches – so you could, for example, have easy access to any emails mentioning your company or a particular person. To create a Quick Link, type your search term into the GMail search bar and then click Add Quick Link from the Quick Links box in the left-hand panel (which only appears after you’ve enabled the Quick Links feature).

2. YouTube/Flickr/Picasa previews

To save the bother of opening up a new tab or window every time the office joker sends round a new YouTube video, this handy feature allows you to watch the video inline from the foot of the email message window. Simply scroll down when you receive a YouTube link and find the little player at the bottom of the message. There are similar previews available for links to photos stored on Picasa and Flickr.

3. Tasks

In a fairly naked attempt to borrow one of the more popular features from Microsoft Outlook, Tasks allows you to create a basic to-do list that pops up in the bottom right-hand corner of the screen. You can set due dates, print your entire task list and manually change the order of tasks using the Actions menu.

4. Offline

Laptop-wielding commuters will appreciate offline access to their inbox. Offline access creates a local copy of your inbox on your PC, allowing you to read your entire inbox even when you can’t reach an internet connection. You can also compose messages while you’re offline, and store them up in the Outbox until you reconnect. This could obviously consume a fair bit of hard disk space, and it can take a fair while to synchronise your inbox the first time you do it. The feature is dependent on Google Gears, which (irritatingly) isn’t supported in the latest version of Firefox (3.5) at the time of publication.

5. Title Tweaks

A small, but potentially invaluable, Labs feature. Title Tweak changes the order of the words in the GMail header, so that your browser tab will now read “”Inbox (20) – dave@GMail.com – Google Mail” rather than “Google Mail – Inbox (20) – dave@GMail.com”. This means you can instantly see how many messages are waiting in your inbox when you leave a GMail tab open in your browser, or from the Windows XP/Vista Taskbar.

6. Inserting Images

Inserting Images allows you to embed pictures directly into email messages rather than adding them as attachments. A small icon appears in your taskbar, and you can either upload images directly from folders on your PC, or insert an image URL from a website. Pop-up options allow you to conveniently resize the image on the fly.

7. Forgotten Attachment Detector

Sounds like a novelty feature, but it saves you from the embarrassment of those: “And this time I’ve attached the photos I promised” messages. This add-on scans your email text for phrases mentioning attachments, and brings up a pop-up balloon reminding you to clip on an attachment if you’ve forgotten to do so before hitting send. Clever, if not exactly 100% foolproof in our tests.

8. Custom label colours

Labels – GMail’s alternative to folders – are very useful and this nifty add-on allows you to customise your label colours, rather than relying on GMail’s defaults. It also gives you the handy option of renaming your labels, which doesn’t appear by default.

9. Navbar drag and drop

This feature really comes into its own when you start enabling various Labs experiments. It allows you to drag and drop the various boxes where you want them in the GMail interface. So if you don’t bother with GMail chat, you can drop it down to the bottom of the screen and promote your Quick Links (see tip 1) shortcuts instead.

10. Custom Keyboard Shortcuts

Not over-enamoured with GMail’s default keyboard shortcuts, such as the rather cumbersome “gi” for go to inbox? Create your own using this feature, which adds an keyboard shortcuts tab to your settings menu. Stupidly, installing this add-on doesn’t automatically turn on your keyboard shortcuts, leaving you beating the keys in frustration for the first couple of minutes, until you realise you have to switch on the keyboard shortcuts in the General tab of settings too.