Gmail seemingly just removed the button that lets you triage loads of emails at once

If you’re not the inbox zero type — and I’m definitely not — you might sometimes rely on Gmail’s “Select all conversations that match this search” option to read, archive, or delete hundreds or thousands of messages at once.

Except we can’t do that anymore, and neither can a number of angry Gmail users we’ve spotted. The option has up and disappeared.

Instead, we’re seeing a nav bar with a handful of shortcut buttons when we search, like this:

Google didn’t reply to our requests for comment, so we’re not yet sure if we’re looking at an official new UI overhaul for Gmail, a quick experiment, or perhaps even a bug. A Gmail help thread from six days ago has so far gone unanswered.

It does seem that Google’s own Gmail support team was unaware of a change; on at least a couple occasions, they’ve been giving readers instructions that no longer work.

For now, if you want to read, archive, or delete more than a page worth of conversations at a time, you may need to use a filter instead, using the “Also apply filter to matching conversations” button, and then delete the filter after the fact.

I just gave it a try with some newsletters, and it still seems to work. It’s just a hassle.