It’s been one year since my original post on Gmail slowness, and it now seems that, since then, others have been having similar issues.

I’ve collated some tips to fix your gmail slowness:

1. First things first, make sure your internet connection is speedy.
2. Switch to a modern browser, like Google Chrome.
3. Delete your cookies, temporary internet files, and disable browser plugins.
4. Disable any ‘Google Labs’ features you have enabled for your Gmail account. Disable Gchat.
5. Add “?nocheckbrowser” to the URL — Try via this link: https://mail.google.com/gmail?nocheckbrowser
6. Decrease the number of mails shown on one page.  You can do this via General Settings via the ‘maximum page size’ setting.
7. Use a third party email client, like Sparrow, Mac Mail, or Thunderbird.
8. Try ‘basic HTML mode’.
9. If all else has failed, you’ll want to decrease the total space of the items you’ve got stored in your Google Account.  Protip: If you search for ‘before:1/1/2012’ you can select all mails that were sent before that date.  Another useful search is ‘has:attachment’, which will find any emails with files attached.

If you’ve tried all of the above, you may be out of luck.  According to a variety of sources, Google has been fixing the issue by moving users who have clout to new gmail servers.  There are a few interesting workarounds being linked around the web.  I recommend this one.

jkincaid, a Googler, adds details via this hacker news thread:

The Gmail team is most definitely aware of this and a fix is in the works. At SXSW this year there was a panel with four or five Gmail team members and this came up — they said it’s related to the size of your inbox, and that it has a lot of Googlers complaining internally too, since many of them have the oldest/large accounts… See http://techcrunch.com/2010/03/14/gmail-slow/

So there you have it folks.  Google is now acknowledging the Gmail slowness issue.  If you’re experiencing gmail slowness, or if you’ve got any tips for increasing gmail speediness, leave a comment below.