Fixing Gmail: One Inbox, Not Many

After sending google some extremely unhappy feedback and dinging them in their survey, I decided I would blog about my frustration with their idea of "giving you more control" by making decisions for you-- a very Facebook approach. But before doing so, I wandered through the settings to see if any improvements could be made.

Lo and behold, there is a simple way to return to a single, unified Inbox... they just didn't bother to tell us!

1. 
   Click on the Preferences gear on the upper right of your Gmail screen. Select the "Settings" item from the drop down menu.
2. 
   Click on the "Inbox" tab on the upper left of the new screen.
3. 
   Per the instructions there, deselect all categories to go back to your old Inbox. (You cannot deselect "Primary". That's OK.)
4. Scroll down and select [Save Changes]
5. Things are back to normal!

I would love to be able to claim that my feedback to Google prompted this, but I'm sure it was there all along. This moves them back well above Facebook in my opinion. Facebook almost never gives you a way out; they know best what you want, and are determined t give it to you whether you want it or not.