〜 Hey Raha

Guides for school parents

Stop school emails taking over your Gmail

Every parent knows the feeling: three school emails before drop-off, a newsletter at noon, a fee reminder at four, and a phone that buzzes for every single one. None of them can be ignored, and none of them needed to interrupt your afternoon either.

Here is the ten-minute fix. Two steps for Gmail, because the step every other guide stops at only does half the job. Then the safe version for Outlook.

Step 1: the Gmail filter

In Gmail on a computer:

  1. Open Settings, then See all settings, then Filters and Blocked Addresses.
  2. Choose Create a new filter.
  3. In the From field, put your school's email domain (everything after the @ in a school email, for example @yourschool.ae). Add the school platforms too if they email you: ClassDojo, Seesaw, Toddle and friends.
  4. Click Create filter, then tick Skip the Inbox (Archive it) and Apply the label (create one called School).

School mail now lands under the School label instead of your inbox. Nothing is deleted, nothing is lost. It is all there when you look for it.

Never use "mark as spam" for this. Spam is eventually hidden and deleted. A filter files; spam destroys.

Step 2: the setting every guide misses

Here is the catch: the filter controls where mail lands. A different setting controls what pings. If your Gmail app is set to notify for All mail, archived school emails still buzz your phone, and you will wonder why the filter "didn't work". It did. This is the other half:

  1. In the Gmail app on your phone, open Settings and tap your account.
  2. Tap Notifications and choose High priority only.
  3. While you are there: Manage labels, tap your School label, and make sure it is not set to notify.

That is the moment the pings actually stop.

One sender still getting through?

Schools often send from more than one address: the office, the platform, a noreply subdomain. Open the email that pinged you, copy the exact address it came from, and add it to your filter. Usually it takes two or three rounds and then silence.

The Outlook version

Outlook's answer is its Focused and Other tabs, and it is the safer route than rules that move mail to folders:

  1. In the Outlook app, open a school email, tap the three dots, choose Move to Other, then Always move.
  2. In Settings, Notifications, choose Focused only.

School mail stays in your inbox, tucked in the Other tab, and your phone stays quiet.

Muting works best when something is still reading them

A quiet inbox is lovely. A quiet inbox where the trip fee still gets paid and the PE kit still gets packed is the actual goal. That is what Hey Raha is for: she reads the school emails you just muted, pulls out the dates, fees and to-dos, and turns them into one calm daily plan for your family. Archived, filed, tabbed away, she reads them all the same.

Made in the UAE, so she knows FS2 from Year 1 and a term-fee deadline in AED.

Try Hey Raha free

Using Hey Raha already? Archiving is completely safe: she reads your mailbox through Gmail's API, beyond the inbox. Outlook users, keep school mail in the inbox (the Other tab counts) and she keeps reading too. The Quiet the school pings card in your setup guide has these same steps in-app.