Jan 20, 2011 19:07 GMT  ·  By

Gmail Labs has been a treasure trove of small or quirky features that sometimes make a huge difference and prove very useful. But the success of the feature has also proven a drawback since there are quite a few Labs features now and no way to search for a particular one.

Finally, a couple of Google engineers figured a search feature was way overdue and quite a big oversight for a company famed for its search.

"Have you ever found it just a little bit tricky to find what you were looking for on the Gmail Labs Settings page? Scrolling was ok when there were a handful of Labs, but now that there are over 50 it’s another story," Greg Bullock, Software Engineer at Google, wrote.

"A lunchtime discussion made us realize that having to rely on the browser’s search function or endless scrolling makes it hard to find the Labs features you want. So another Gmail engineer named Manu and I decided take an afternoon and address this. The result is an addition to the Settings page which filters the visible Labs as you type," he announced.

The fact that it only took them an afternoon to make this makes it an even bigger oversight.

Scrolling down though a list of tens of Labs extensions is not a great way of finding new stuff and, unless you already knew that some features was available in Labs, it was very unlikely that you would have went through the trouble of looking for them.

Thankfully, that's not the case anymore. Of course, search is a great step towards making Labs features easier to find, but there more that could be done.

What Gmail Labs needs is a better way of discovering new features, something that showcases functionality that you may find useful but which wouldn't occur to you to search for.