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Gmail's minimalist design is functional and inoffensive, but you would be hard-pressed to call it eye-catching. Thankfully, Google will let you customise how your inbox looks with your own photos and themes.
Navigate to the settings menu by clicking on the gear icon in the top right corner of your Gmail window. Click on 'Themes', and Gmail will open a pop-up window where you can choose a custom background for your inbox.
Google will offer you a selection of featured photos to use, all of which are attractive and high-quality images. You can also opt for a change in colour scheme or a piece of artwork, if you want to keep it simple.
You don't have to stick to the pictures that Google suggests though. If you click on 'My Photos' in the theme selection window, it will show you a list of all the albums in your Google Photos library. Don't have any albums in your Google Photos library? You can also upload your own image, or even paste the URL of a picture from the web.
Once you've selected a photo, you can even use basic editing tools to tweak how it looks in your inbox. You can apply a vignette effect to the edges, making them darker, and you can blur the image with a slider so it doesn't distract from your emails too much. You can also select both light and dark themes for the text, ensuring that your emails won't clash with a more subdued image.
Click save, and voila - your Gmail inbox has a brand new coat of paint. You can also share your theme with others via an email or shareable link.
