gmail drag, drop and hide labels ... and more!Labels, labels, labels. Although I arguably have too many labels in my Gmail account, Google is helping out in that arena while adding some other cool functionality… Check out Gmail Labels, you can drag and drop, hide, and more.

Mine has been auto-set for me by Gmail (as everyone’s likely will be), and now all I have to do is go in later and customize their settings – if I need to. Labels have moved up to right under the Inbox, and the ones I use the least often have been hidden. To customize labels, all you need to do is click the ## More link underneath of the labels you can see, (mine says 34 More) or you can go to Settings > Labels and you’ll see that settings page has changed.

Also, Gmail has retired their first Labs experiment – Right Side Labels…

All of these changes also mean the end of Right-side Labels, an experimental Gmail Labs feature. This is the first Labs feature we’re retiring. (The idea behind Labs was always that things could break or disappear at any time or they might work so well that they become regular features. More on that soon…) Now that labels aren’t in their own little box and take up much less space, moving them around the screen didn’t seem as important. We realize quite a few of you used and liked Right-side Labels, so if you feel strapped for left nav screen real estate without it, try turning on Right-side Chat in Labs instead.

- Gmail Labs, Damian Gajda, Software Engineer

Don’t forget you can also move conversations into different labels (out of your inbox, but into the selected label) just by selecting messages and then going to the “new” Move to dropdown.