I use the keyboard shortcuts [ and ] a lot in gmail.

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However, when I do I establish a “direction” but sometimes, I press e as I want to go back to the thread list. I don’t always navigate the same direction.

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For a while I turned on the “auto advance”:

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Option. Today I abandoned it mostly because it doesn’t support the notion of “inertia” IMHO.. Basically I want a 3rd option that is along the lines of:

  1. Normally go back to thread view, but if I have used [,],j,k previously continue the previous direction I was going.

I don’t think it will happen but it would make this option far more valuable to me.