# How To Whitelist an Email Address in Gmail

Spam filtering is an excellent tool that saves a lot of time as it recognizes
potential spam messages and flags them as spam automatically saving you time
going through a pack-filled inbox. But it isn't always 100% accurate.

If you are having trouble with the Gmail client flagging some emails as spam
even though those emails are from a trusted source you may want to whitelist the
source email address. In this quick tutorial, we will guide you through each and
every step.

## Option 1: Creating new Gmail contact

To tell Google’s spam filter that you want to receive messages from a certain
email address, simply add the address to your Gmail contacts. This will indicate
that the sender is in fact trusted by you and you want to receive their
messages.

Unfortunately, it does not guarantee that those messages won't go to spam ever
again. To be 100% certain please see the next option.

### In Gmail on the web:

1. Open the email from a sender you want to whitelist
2. Click on the sender’s profile picture (info box will open)
3. Click on the _Add to Contacts_ icon in the top-right corner of the box

![Gmail add contact](https://imagedelivery.net/xZXo0QFi-1_4Zimer-T0XQ/2a2bc264-ca4a-47be-d358-e25465fe9100/public =430x219)

### In Gmail on the phone:

1. Open the email from a sender you want to whitelist
2. Click on the sender’s profile picture (action sheet will pop up)
3. Click on the _Add to Contacts_ icon in the top-right corner of the box

## Option 2: Creating a filter rule

To completely prevent **all emails from a specific sender to be marked as
spam**, you can create a custom filter rule. This is Gmail's alternative to
whitelist.

Note that this can only be done in the desktop version of Gmail.

### In Gmail on the web:

1. Click on the _Show search options_ icon in the search bar at the top (A form
   will pop up)
2. Enter the sender's email address into the _From_ field (this address will be
   whitelisted)
3. Click on the _Create filter_ at the bottom right corner (selection of
   check-boxes will appear)
4. Select _Never send it to spam_
5. Click on _Create filter_

![Gmail find emails](https://imagedelivery.net/xZXo0QFi-1_4Zimer-T0XQ/596ecdff-ee0d-49ab-ea54-652a51be1f00/public =737x497)

![Gmail filter emails](https://imagedelivery.net/xZXo0QFi-1_4Zimer-T0XQ/2fe61bd9-c2d6-4396-ddf6-e6304d7a7400/public =733x615)