Shelf — sections & notes for Gmail (zero email access)

Before and after

A default Gmail label: twelve unrelated threads in date order

The same label organized into Shelf sections with notes

Before: everything in the order it arrived — parents, insurance, deadlines, and noise interleaved. (Click the image to flip.)

Open any thread knowing exactly where you left off

Notes ride on the conversation itself. Write the steps once — when you come back, they're waiting at the top, checkboxes and all. No more re-reading a whole thread to remember what "reply to this" actually involves.

An open Gmail conversation with a Shelf sticky note under the subject: 'Before replying', with a checklist — check our actual numbers (done), ask Laura about line 4, loop in finance

The context tax, cancelled: tick steps off right on the note — it saves instantly, and it's there on the thread everywhere the thread appears.

Shelves for the way you already work

Same tool, different systems. Each of these is nothing but shelves, notes, and colors — about thirty seconds of setup.

A GTD setup: Next actions, Waiting for, and Someday/maybe shelves in an Action label

An Eisenhower matrix: Urgent & important, Schedule, Delegate, and Someday shelves in the inbox

An educator's label: Waiting on others, This week with a Parents & students sub-shelf, To read

A sales pipeline: Closing this week, In conversation, and New leads shelves in a Clients label

Busy parents: teachers, coaches, camps, and forms — "Needs a reply" on top, so nothing slips past Friday.

Sixty seconds, start to finish

A real session on a staged inbox: make a shelf, drag threads on, stick a checklist note, nest a sub-shelf, drop "Everything else" on top.

Labels tell you what an email is.
Shelf tells you what to do next.

Everything renders in Gmail's own visual language — same grays, same blues, same motion. If you can tell where Gmail ends and Shelf begins, that's a bug.

Shelves & sub-shelves

Your own section headers inside the inbox and any label — create one in three seconds, drag threads onto it, collapse what's done. Nest a sub-shelf inside a shelf ("This week" → "Parents & students") and drag it back out whenever.

Your order

Drag threads into the sequence you'll actually work them in — within a shelf, between shelves, shelves themselves. Not date order, not Gmail's guesses. Yours.

Notes & checklists

A private sticky on any thread: ✎ promised reply by Friday — visible in the list and on the open conversation. Bold, italic, links (⌘K), bullets, numbers, and checkboxes you can tick right on the note. Long notes collapse.

Colors, quietly

A small Gmail-native palette for shelves and notes — no color picker, on purpose. A colored note paints a slim edge on the row itself, so urgency reads while you scan.

Keyboard-first, if you want

Alt+N notes the hovered thread, Alt+M moves it. ⌘B/I/U, ⌘⇧8/7/9 for lists and checklists — the same muscle memory as Docs.

Works where you work

Dark mode and custom themes detected automatically. Reading-pane layouts supported. Multiple Google accounts kept separate. Everything exportable as JSON.

What makes it different

Multiple inboxes — anywhere. Gmail's own Multiple Inboxes feature splits only your inbox. Shelf gives every label its own sections too: your Action label, your Clients label, each with its own shelves.
Your order, not the algorithm's. Email tools sort by date, sender, or "importance." Shelf is the only ordering that matters: the one you chose.
The note lives on the email. No separate app to check. What you're waiting on is written on the thread itself, wherever you see it.
It can't read your email. No OAuth grant, no Gmail API, no server. That's architecture, not a privacy promise.

What Shelf can't do — by design

No Gmail account access: no OAuth grant, no Gmail API, no server anywhere
Cannot read, send, archive, delete, or label your email
Your sections and notes live in your browser's own extension storage and never leave it
No analytics, no tracking, no account
Uninstall it and Gmail is exactly as it was

Why this exists — and why it's free

I built Shelf for myself. I've tried the whole productivity canon — GTD, inbox zero, getting every email out of Gmail and into one master task list, every app that promises to turn email into tasks. They all failed me the same way: I live in Gmail. Whatever I moved out of it, I stopped looking at. The inbox is where my actual work shows up, so the organizing had to happen inside it.

I'm also picky about how software feels. Every Gmail organizer I tried felt bolted on — foreign colors, clunky popups, that half-second of jank on every action. I wanted something that looked and moved like Gmail itself, as if Google had shipped it.

So Shelf is the tool I wished existed: my sections, my order, my notes, natively inside Gmail. It's free because this isn't a business — it's a thing I made to solve my own problem. Friends borrowed it and told me it stuck, which is the only reason it's public. If it sticks for you too, a store review is genuinely the most helpful thing you can do.

— Greg, an educator who gets a lot of email

What people use it for

Waiting-on tracking — the follow-ups that slip: one shelf, one red note each
Inbox-zero triage — drag "Everything else" to the top: new mail first, shelves below
Job hunts — Applied / Interviewing / Offer, without exporting your life to a kanban app
Big projects — house purchase, renovation, wedding: a shelf per vendor
Family & school admin — a shelf per kid, per school, per season
Client work — every client gets a shelf inside your Action label
Teachers & school staff — triage parent and student email, with notes carrying the context
Eisenhower matrix — Urgent & Important / Schedule / Delegate / Someday, right inside the inbox

Questions

Is it really free?

Yes — because it isn't a business. I built Shelf to fix my own Gmail and friends asked to use it; that's the whole story. No trial, no locked features, no upsell. If it saves you time there's a coffee link in the options page, and a store review helps more than money.

Does it work with the reading pane (split view)?

Yes — vertical and horizontal splits both. Shelf detects the reading pane and stays out of Gmail's way there, so conversations open in the pane like they should.

How can it work without reading my email?

Shelf is a page overlay. It draws sections and notes on top of Gmail's own thread list in your browser tab, and remembers your organization by Gmail's thread numbers — never content. There's no server to send anything to.

Does it sync between my computers?

Yes — via Chrome's own extension sync on your Google profile, the same mechanism that syncs your bookmarks. Shelf has no cloud of its own. Notes don't appear on phones; that's the tradeoff for zero email permissions.

What happens if Gmail changes its design?

Shelf fails safe: your email is untouched (it always is), and a small banner tells you an update is needed instead of the extension silently vanishing. Your data stays put and can be exported as JSON any time.

Is it accessible?

Yes: full keyboard support with visible focus, screen-reader labels on every control, reduced-motion support, and it's colorblind-friendly by design — color never carries meaning alone; chips have words and shelves have names.

What happens when I uninstall?

Gmail looks exactly like it did before Shelf. Your sections and notes are deleted with the extension — export a JSON backup first if you want to keep them.

Your inbox, on shelves.

Add Shelf to Chrome — free Free forever · no account · can't read your email