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When a message arrives in your inbox, Replyless reads it and assigns it to a category before you ever see it. Categories help you understand at a glance what kind of attention each message needs — and let you batch similar messages together for faster clearing. You can override any automatic assignment, create custom categories, and filter your inbox by category at any time.

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Default categories

Replyless ships with a set of default categories that cover the most common inbox patterns. Each category has a name, a description, and a default triage behavior.
The Action required category is the most important for reaching inbox zero. Replyless will always surface these messages at the top of your triage queue regardless of when they arrived.

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How messages are assigned to categories

Replyless uses several signals to decide which category a message belongs to:
  • Sender address and domain — Known newsletter platforms, CRM tools, and bulk senders are recognized automatically.
  • Message headers — Headers like List-Unsubscribe, Precedence: bulk, and Auto-Submitted indicate automated or mass-sent email.
  • Subject line and body content — Keywords, tone, and structure help distinguish a personal message from a sales pitch or a receipt.
  • Thread history — If you have previously replied to a sender, Replyless is more likely to categorize their messages as personal or action required.
  • Your past behavior — If you consistently clear or archive messages from a sender into a specific category, Replyless adjusts future assignments to match.

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Overriding a category assignment

If Replyless assigns a message to the wrong category, you can change it in one step.
1

Open the message

Click the message in your inbox. The current category label appears near the top of the message view.
2

Click the category label

Click the label to open a dropdown showing all available categories.
3

Select the correct category

Choose the category that better fits the message. The change takes effect immediately and the message moves to the correct category view.
4

Apply to all messages from this sender (optional)

After reassigning, Replyless will ask whether you want to apply this category to all future messages from the same sender. Confirm to create a sender rule, or dismiss to apply the change only to this message.

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Customizing categories

Go to Settings → Categories. Click the pencil icon next to any default category to rename it. The name change is cosmetic — the category’s matching behavior stays the same.

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Filtering your inbox by category

The left sidebar in the Replyless Inbox lists all active categories with a count badge showing how many uncleared messages each contains. Click any category to filter the inbox view to only those messages. This is useful for batching work — for example, clicking Newsletter to clear all newsletters in one session before switching to Action required for messages that need replies.
Start your clearing sessions with Action required to make sure nothing time-sensitive is missed, then work through lower-priority categories like newsletters and FYI messages.