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Google has rolled out an updated Gmail app for Android which lets you archive new messages without even opening the app. If you’re running Android 4.1 or later you can do it from the notification.

Here’s how it works — when a new message arrives you’ll see an icon in your system tray at the top of the screen. Pull down the notification tray and you’ll get a little more information such as the subject line and the first line or so of text.

Then if you pull down on the Gmail notification itself you’ll see a few more options including Archive and Reply — letting you move a message from your inbox to the “All Mail” section without even opening it to read the whole thing.

Or I suppose you can hit the reply button to start composing a response right away — but it’s more likely that you’re going to want to read the whole message before doing that. So it’s the quick archive feature that’s kind of a big deal here.

If you’re not running Android 4.1 or later, the latest Gmail app also offers some bug fixes, faster search, and other performance improvements.