Weird bug in iPad mail app

If you use the iPad mail app with Gmail, set up as an exchange account, you get a folder labelled [Gmail] which has your spam and starred mail folders.

But it turns out that an undocumented feature turns up if you also create a label called [Gmail]:

Labels and these special folders are different, so why are they getting mixed up? Or if they’re meant to be mixed- why are their two [Gmail] headings?

It seems to have slipped through the developers’ minds when they stored them in the same place, because the app behaves very inconsistently with this setup (variously duplicating labels and headings, and then leaving one list out of sync when changes are made).

Workaround: rename your labels:

I hope the developers are paying more attention next release- I’m only blogging this because there’s nothing much that google turned up about it.