The Gmail dot and plus trick, explained
If you have a Gmail account, you already have far more email addresses than you think. Two small rules in how Gmail delivers mail make that possible, and once you know them, keeping spam under control gets a lot easier.
Rule 1: dots don't matter
Gmail ignores periods in the username part of the address. These all go to the same inbox:
samkhan@gmail.comsam.khan@gmail.coms.a.m.k.h.a.n@gmail.com
Google did this on purpose. People mistype dots all the time, and it stops someone from registering sam.khan to impersonate samkhan.
The number of dot variations depends on the length of your username. Every gap between two letters can either have a dot or not, so a username with n characters has 2n-1 versions. That's 31 for a 6-character name and more than a thousand for an 11-character one.
Rule 2: everything after a plus is ignored
Add +anything before the @ and the mail still arrives:
samkhan+amazon@gmail.comsamkhan+newsletters@gmail.comsamkhan+2026taxes@gmail.com
There's no limit here, and you can make one up on the spot. Nothing needs to be set up in Gmail beforehand.
Why bother?
You find out who shared your address
Sign up to every shop and newsletter with its own plus tag. If spam shows up addressed to samkhan+randomshop@gmail.com, you know exactly where it came from, and you can filter that one address away without touching anything else.
Your inbox sorts itself
Receipts, newsletters and job alerts can each get their own tag and their own label. More on that below.
Testing is easier
Developers and QA folks use plus addresses constantly to create lots of test accounts that all land in one real inbox.
Setting up a filter (takes a minute)
- Open Gmail in a desktop browser.
- In the search bar, type
to:samkhan+newsletters@gmail.com(with your own address). - Click the small sliders icon on the right of the search bar, then Create filter.
- Tick what you want: Skip the Inbox, Apply the label, or Delete it.
- Click Create filter. Tick "Also apply filter to matching conversations" if you want to clean up old mail too.
Filters for dot variations work the same way. Just search for the exact dotted address.
Where it doesn't work
- Some sign-up forms reject the plus sign. It's a valid character, but badly written validation still trips over it. Use a dot variation instead.
- Bigger companies normalize addresses. Streaming services, social networks and marketplaces often strip dots and tags before checking for duplicates. It won't get you a second free trial, and trying can get your account flagged.
- It isn't anonymous. Anyone can remove the tag and see your real address. If you need to hide your address completely, a temporary email is the better tool.
- Google Workspace is different. Plus addressing works on most work accounts, but dots are treated as real characters there.
Generate a batch in seconds
Typing out dot variations by hand gets old quickly. Our Gmail alias generator creates up to 100 at a time, with dots, plus tags or both. It runs entirely in your browser, and your address is never sent to our servers.