How the Gmail dot trick works
Most people assume every character in an email address matters. On Gmail that is only half true. Google ignores dots in the part before the @ sign completely: as far as Gmail is concerned, john.smith@gmail.com, j.ohnsmith@gmail.com and j.o.h.n.s.m.i.t.h@gmail.com are one and the same address, and a message sent to any of them lands in the same inbox. Google built this in from the start, partly so that a sender who misremembers where the dots go still reaches the right person. The same behavior applies to Google Workspace accounts on custom domains.
The practical effect is that a single Gmail address is quietly a whole family of addresses. A username with eight characters has 128 dot placements, and every one of them is yours, with no setup, no settings to change and nothing to register. This generator simply writes out the full family for any address you type in, so you can pick the variants you need instead of working them out by hand.
One honest caveat before you use them
The dot trick is a Gmail and Google Workspace behavior, and only that. On most other providers dots count as different characters, so a dotted variant of an Outlook, Yahoo or company address can be a completely different account, or no account at all. This tool generates the variants for any address because the list itself is useful for testing and planning, but variants only deliver to the same inbox where the provider ignores dots. Never use a dotted variant of a non-Gmail address for anything important unless you have confirmed how that provider treats dots, and never use variants of an address that is not yours.
What to use dot variations for
- Organize your signups: give each service its own variation, then create a Gmail filter that looks at which address a message was sent to and files it under a label. Newsletters, shopping and banking mail sort themselves.
- Spot who shared your address: if one variation is used for exactly one service and spam starts arriving at it, you know where the leak happened.
- Test your own signup flow: developers and testers need many distinct looking addresses that still arrive in one test inbox. Dot variations are the standard trick for that, because each form sees a new address while every confirmation email lands in one place.
- Separate roles on one account: use one variation for work lists, another for personal mail, and filter each to its own label, all inside a single inbox.
How many variations does an address have?
The math is simple. Between every pair of characters in the username there is a gap, and each gap either gets a dot or it does not. A username of length n has n minus 1 gaps, so the total is 2 to the power of (n minus 1). Five characters give 16 variations, eight give 128, ten give 512, and fifteen give 16,384. Because the list doubles with every extra character, this page lists at most 4,096 variations and tells you the true total for longer usernames.
The plus trick: the companion move
Dots are not the only free variations. Adding a plus sign and a word after your username, such as name+travel@gmail.com, also delivers to the same inbox, and this plus addressing works on Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo and many other providers, which makes it the better tool away from Google. The two tricks combine: a plus tag says what an address is for, and the dots make it look different to a form. Two honest limits apply. Some sign-up forms wrongly reject plus signs in addresses, and a filter is only as good as the discipline of using a different variant or tag for each service from the start.
Using the generated list
Type an address above and the variations appear instantly, counted and ready. Copy All puts the whole shown list on your clipboard, one address per line, which pastes cleanly into a spreadsheet, a test data file or your password manager notes. The text download gives the same list as a .txt file, and the CSV download adds an email header row for tools that import contacts or test users. Everything is generated in your browser, so the address you type is never sent anywhere.