By Kevin Purdy, Lifehacker – March 31, 2010 at 08:00AM
Ever wish you could get even more nit-picky about your Gmail filters? Free Gmail-based webapp Syphir filters messages by arrival time, number of recipients, and whether they “need” replies. It really works, and it might just scratch your last, hard-to-reach inbox itch.
Syphir doesn’t need you to create an account, so much as authorize it to access your Gmail inbox. It gets access to your full Gmail data, inbox messages and all, but doesn’t get your Gmail password, due to Gmail’s implementing OAuth access to IMAP/SMTP protocols in Gmail. Once you sign in with your Gmail username, and then authorize Syphir to use your inbox, you get right into creating rules for your inbox, starting with conditions.
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I don’t possess the Gmail filter black belt that Adam or Gina have earned, but from my experience trying to keep political forwards and PR spam out of my personal inbox, I can see a few things that look new in Syphir’s options. “Time of arrival” lets you choose a window for when messages arrive, like 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., and its counterpart “Time since arrival,” is in the works. “Number of recipients” lets you choose an exact number of recipients, or an “at least” or “at most” benchmark. “Attachments” isn’t just a simple “has:” switch, but lets you filter messages that have multiple files. “Needs a reply” gives Syphir a bit of semantic wiggle room, as it examines the message body, subject, and sender context to offer a condition of does, doesn’t, or maybe needs a reply. The other fields here should look familiar to anyone who’s dug into Gmail’s advanced filters and searches.
What can Syphir do with your email once it meets a condition? A few neat things, beyond the standard archive/delete/star/label actions. You can have it delay the message, so that it doesn’t appear until, say, 6 p.m. or 7 a.m. If you’ve got an iPhone and download Syphir’s SmartPush app ($2.99 U.S. in the App Store), you can have Syphir send a push notification for just those most crucial of messages that meet the criteria you’ve set up.
You can create multiple rules, and you don’t have to do anything to make them work—if you’ve authorized Syphir to access your Gmail inbox, it’ll do its thing as mail crawls into your inbox, laying down the new laws you’ve created.
Syphir looks like a killer add-on for Gmail users who need a little something beyond what Gmail offers in its own filters, and the SmartPush app makes for a very nice alert system when you’re waiting on very important stuff. It’s a free webapp crafted by three MIT students, and it’s definitely worth a look.