Google has updated its Gmail inbox for desktop and mobile, introducing tabs to help users sort and prioritise emails.

For desktop users, the inbox will group mail into categories and these will appear as different tabs. Users will be able to choose the categories they want, allowing them to ignore promotion emails easily and concentrate on messages from their key contacts.

Google product manager Itamar Gilad said in a company blog post: “Your inbox is organised in a way that lets you see what’s new at a glance and decide which emails you want to read when. You can easily customise the new inbox, select the tabs you want from all five to none, drag-and-drop to move messages between tabs, set certain senders to always appear in a particular tab and star messages so that they also appear in the Primary tab.”

For mobile users of the Gmail for Android 4.0+ and Gmail for iPhone and iPad apps, they will see their Primary mail category when they open the app. Google has said they will then be able to easily navigate to other tabs.

Google plans to roll out the new inbox gradually to desktop, Android and iOS users in the next few weeks. If users do not like the updated inbox, they can switch off the tabs in the settings menu.

The updates to Gmail follow similar updates made by Yahoo in April to its mail service, helping users more easily manage their increasing number of daily emails.