Hide Buzz from your Gmail inbox

Almost immediately after launch, articles appeared on the Internet showing how to hide the email notifications or turn Buzz off completely. The number of updates can be overwhelming, especially if you follow lots of people or very active ones. For example, my unread buzz count usually exceeds 10 times the amount of spam!

If you would like to keep Buzz around, but don’t like to be constantly reminded of new updates, Gmail has a feature that can help. Go to Settings ► Labels and hide the Buzz system label.

Now you can find ‘Buzz’ under the ‘n More’ link in the sidebar, and the unread count is visible only when you click on that link. If you created a filter in Gmail to archive buzz notifications under a specific label, you can also hide that label this way, to reduce your buzz-related distractions to a minimum.

Google recently promised they will soon extend the Settings page in Gmail to hide Buzz from Gmail or disable it completely. The change hasn’t rolled out to my account yet, but hopefully they will not stop at this and will continue to improve Buzz based on user feedback.