Gmail’s strong filters have reliably sifted out promotions and updates for years if you’ve wanted them to. But on Saturday, there were reports that things were going wrong with inboxes being overloaded with unwanted messages. You can read my full description of what happened when below, but Google says it’s now fixed.
It acknowledged the issue on the Workspace Status Dashboard. “Gmail users might see banners indicating missing spam checks.We are experiencing an issue with Gmail beginning on Saturday, 2026-01-24 05:02 US/Pacific. Users might experience the following banner: “Be careful with this message. Gmail hasn’t scanned this message for spam, unverified senders, or harmful software.”We advise the users to be extra diligent in lieu of missing spam checks. Our engineering team is investigating the issue,” it said.
In all, the issue lasted a little under five hours. Most recently, Google has updated the dashboard, saying, “The issue with Gmail email classification is resolved as of Saturday, 2026-01-24 09:55 US/Pacific.”
“We will publish an analysis of this incident once we have completed our internal investigation. We thank you for your patience while we worked on resolving the issue,” it went on.
Here’s how the issue first came to light.
“Gmail’s filter system has been a strong way to quiet the noise of constant promotional emails and updates, but it might be broken. We are seeing several reports of Google’s email service not filtering emails as inboxes blow up,” Andrew Romero at 9to5Google reported. The site added that the issue is widespread among users.
When The Gmail Filter Issue Began
The issue began on the morning of Saturday, Jan. 24, when the Promotions and Updates filters seemed to have broken down for some users. The reports came from Reddit users, Google’s official forums and even some 9to5Google staff. “My promotional emails are all going to primary inbox. I did not change anything and this just started happening today,” one user commented on a Google forum. Another said that something changed overnight, with the same result that updates and promotions landed in the inbox. “Changing settings didn’t fix,” they commented, with another commenting, “How do I stop these?’
Inbox Flooding Replaces Gmail’s Usual Order
Instead of the orderly way the filters have worked, “notifications have been pouring in nonstop for some,” the report went on. “These emails are from companies and businesses whose emails would normally be filtered into either the Promotions or Updates tabs. Google’s redesign in 2013 introduced the automatic filters, and users have become more than used to the reduced amount of notifications that have followed since.”
No Response From Google Yet
So far, there’s been no response from Google, though the initial report claimed that not only had more emails appeared in the inbox but checking the Promotions and Updates tabs seemed to show that “no new emails since the problem first began occurring seem to have been filtered in. In essence, the automatic system that sorts or filters emails into each of Gmail’s inbox categories seems to have broken for the time being,” it said.