Google has officially confirmed that widespread Gmail issues affecting spam filtering and email categorization have been fully resolved after disrupting users worldwide on Saturday, January 24, 2026.
According to Google’s Workspace Status Dashboard, the problem began around 5 a.m. Pacific Time, causing legitimate emails to be incorrectly flagged as spam while promotional and social emails flooded users’ primary inboxes. Many Gmail users took to social media platforms to report that their inbox filters were “completely broken,” with spam messages bypassing detection and trusted contacts receiving unnecessary warning labels.
For many affected users, the normally structured Gmail inbox experience became chaotic. Emails that should have landed in Promotions, Social, or Updates tabs were incorrectly delivered to the Primary inbox, while routine correspondence from known senders was mistakenly flagged as suspicious. Some users also reported delays in receiving important emails, raising concerns for businesses and professionals who rely heavily on Gmail for daily communication.
Throughout Saturday, Google provided updates through its status dashboard, stating that engineers were actively investigating the root cause of the issue. By Saturday evening, the company confirmed that service had been fully restored for all users, bringing spam detection and inbox categorization back to normal performance levels.
In a follow-up statement, Google acknowledged the disruption, saying, “Some Gmail users experienced a misclassification of emails in their inbox, delays in receiving email, and incorrect spam warnings. While the core issue has been resolved, some misclassified messages received before the fix may still appear incorrectly.”
Users experiencing lingering issues were advised to manually reclassify affected emails to help retrain Gmail’s filtering system.
Google also announced that it plans to publish a detailed incident analysis after completing its internal investigation, offering transparency into what caused the outage and how similar issues will be prevented in the future.
The incident highlights how dependent users have become on automated email filtering systems and how even short disruptions can significantly impact productivity. Gmail, which serves over a billion users globally, typically boasts industry-leading spam detection accuracy, making the outage particularly noticeable.
For now, Google assures users that Gmail’s spam filters and inbox tabs are operating normally. If users continue to experience problems, Google recommends refreshing filters, marking emails correctly, and reporting suspicious messages to improve future detection accuracy.
