Google wasn’t kidding when they indicated that they were going to re-focus on their key products. Gmail is getting yet another useful upgrade today – the introduction of a “Move to” option that lets you apply a label to a thread and archive it in one-step, and a “Labels” option that lets you add labels or edit your existing ones.

This makes Gmail a bit more like traditional email programs, where you can simply drag and drop messages into folders in one step. However, as Gmail engineer Emil Eklund notes in a blog post, “unlike with folders, messages can have several labels, so if I get an email from a friend about a trip we're taking together, I can add both a "Friends" and a "Travel" label to it.”







Eklund says the features are being rolled out “over the course of the day,” so you might not see them just yet. Previously, these tasks all lived under the “More Actions” pull-down menu that hovers above your inbox and threads in Gmail – and if you wanted to archive a labeled post, you’d have to click “Archive” separately. Unlike Gmail "Labs" features that are initially optional, "Move to" is being pushed right into production.

Today’s addition follows a host of other upgrades and new features added to Gmail in the past few weeks – a task list for iPhone and Android devices, offline support with Google Gears, and a send and archive button that can also reduce your clicks.

More Gmail Resources From Mashable