Gmail’s Promotions filter appears down! Primary inbox flooded by Updates and Ads

For years, Gmail’s automatic filters have quietly done their job. Promotional emails went where they belonged, updates stayed out of sight, and your primary inbox felt mostly under control. But over the weekend, that balance appears to have slipped. Also Read: Massive data leak! Gmail, Instagram, Netflix accounts among 149 Million logins exposed online

Several Gmail users are reporting that promotional and update emails are suddenly landing straight into their Primary inbox. No setting changes, no manual tweaks, just an inbox that feels louder than usual. Also Read: BD nmAD

The issue seems to have started early Saturday morning. Users across Reddit, Google’s official forums, and even tech journalists noticed the same thing: emails that normally live in the Promotions or Updates tabs were now arriving front and centre. Also Read: Gmail To Get THESE Gemini AI Features: What’s New And How They Help

Instead of a few personal emails spread across the day, notifications began piling up. Brand newsletters, service alerts, and marketing emails all started showing up together, making the Primary inbox feel cluttered again.

What makes this more noticeable is that Gmail’s filter system has been reliable for years. Since Google introduced inbox categories back in 2013, most users have come to depend on them without thinking twice.

Promotions and Updates tabs issue

Another strange part of this issue is what’s not happening. Users checking their Promotions and Updates tabs say they aren’t seeing any new emails there at all. In simple terms, Gmail isn’t just misplacing emails, it seems to have stopped sorting them altogether. Everything that should be filtered out is slipping through to the main inbox, while the other tabs remain unusually quiet.

Changing inbox settings or toggling categories off and on doesn’t seem to fix the problem, based on early user reports.

Google’s response?

So far, Google hasn’t officially acknowledged the issue. There’s no status update, no support post, and no explanation for why the filters suddenly stopped working.

Given how widespread the reports are, this doesn’t appear to be an isolated glitch. It feels more like a backend issue that needs Google’s attention rather than something users can fix on their own.

What users can do for now

Until Google rolls out a fix, there isn’t much users can do apart from manually marking emails as Promotions or muting senders. It’s not ideal, especially for people who rely on Gmail to stay distraction-free.

If nothing else, this episode is a reminder of how much we depend on invisible systems working quietly in the background, and how noticeable things become the moment they stop.