I have always appreciated how iOS can filter iMessages by "Known" and "Unknown senders". I decided to write a script that will do this for your email (GMail only, sorry). I have put it on GitHub for feedback & improvement. Please feel free to copy the script and use it yourself.
- First it pulls your Google Contacts for specific contact Groups. You can change what Groups you want it to match against in the script). The default is
System Group: Friends. - Then it goes thru each message in your Inbox and matches message sender's email against the list pulled in first step above (i.e. from your contacts).
- If there is a match, it will apply a label to the message. This is also configurable in the script. The default label is
Contact.
- Create a new Google Apps Script project here: https://script.google.com/u/0/home
- Copy and paste the script code into a new or existing file in this new project
- Edit script variables as needed for you
- Test script (this will prompt you to give your script permission to your Gmail and Google Contacts)
- NOTE: I HAVE NO ACCESS TO YOUR DATA. THIS IS YOU GIVING YOUR NEW SCRIPT ACCESS TO YOUR DATA.
- Set a time-based trigger so script runs on regular basis. FWIW my is set to every 5 minutes.
I hope you find it useful. Please feel free to share with anyone who may find useful.