Gmail’s “Shelfies” April Fools joke will live on as new custom theme sharing feature

Google continued its April Fools tradition with a long list of pranks yesterday, one of which included announcing a new “Shelfies” feature for Gmail that let users snap and share selfies to use as background in Gmail. The feature, which was completely functional within Gmail yesterday, was clearly just a bit of fun for April Fools day, but Google announced today that it will actually stick around as a new custom theme sharing feature.

While Gmail has allowed users to create custom themes since 2012, it will now provide an option to “Share your theme” within settings. The Gmail team will also be sharing some of its favorite themes shared by the community through its Google+ page. Here’s how it works:

If you’re using a custom theme that you want shared, simply click on “Share your theme” under Themes in Settings… And if you opted into Gmail’s top trending Shelfies theme, then you can either update to your own custom theme or follow the Gmail Google+ page where we’ll be sharing some of our favorites on “Theme Thursdays.”