Connect your email to Claude in 2 minutes.

Setup · 4 minute read · exact prompts included

So a lot of people find out Claude can dig through a bank statement screenshot and list every subscription they pay for, and then they ask the obvious next question: do I really have to screenshot things forever? And the answer is no, because you can just connect your email, and then Claude can look at your actual receipts itself.

This is honestly the single upgrade that makes Claude feel less like a chatbot and more like someone who works for you, so here is exactly how to set it up and the three things I actually use it for.

Connect it (about 2 minutes)

1. Open Claude and go to Settings, then look for Connectors.
2. Find Gmail (or your email provider) and hit Connect.
3. A normal Google sign-in window pops up. You approve it once, and that's it, you're connected.

One honest note: which connectors you see can depend on your plan and where you're using Claude, so if you don't see email in the list, check the desktop app or the web version at claude.ai. And Claude doesn't sit there reading your inbox all day. It only looks when you ask it something, which is exactly how it should be.

Find every subscription you pay for

Every subscription you have emails you a receipt, which means your inbox already knows where your money goes even if you don't. So paste this:

Search my email for receipts and subscription charges from the last 3 months. List every recurring charge with the amount, and flag anything I might have forgotten I pay for.

The "flag anything I might have forgotten" part is where it gets a little uncomfortable, because there is always something. Mine was a storage plan for an app I deleted last year.

The morning inbox summary

Instead of scrolling 40 emails to find the 2 that matter:

Summarize my unread emails from the last 24 hours. Group them into: needs a reply, good to know, and ignore. Keep it short.

Draft the reply you keep avoiding

You know the email. It's been sitting there for four days. So:

Find the email from [name] about [topic] and draft a polite reply that says yes to the meeting but moves it to next week. Show me the draft before anything gets sent.

That last sentence matters: Claude drafts, you approve, you hit send. It doesn't send email on its own, and to be honest with you, you don't want it to.

The honest privacy section

So try the subscription prompt first. It takes two minutes to connect and one pasted sentence, and it usually pays for itself the same day it finds the thing you forgot you were paying for.

Brand new to Claude? Start with the First Hour checklist first, then come back to this.