In this article, you will find out how to delete all emails on Gmail. Have you let your Gmail inbox become cluttered and overrun? Maybe you’re looking for a quick way to mass delete newsletters or emails from a specific domain name.
Here’s how to tidy up your Gmail account in record time. Want to wipe your Gmail inbox clean? Using Gmail’s bulk delete option, you can delete all emails from your Gmail account at once in just a few clicks.
This works on the Gmail website, and we’ll show you how to do it. If you use the Gmail app on an iPhone, iPad, or Android phone, you can’t delete all emails at once on your device.
This means you will have to rely on the Gmail site to purge your inbox. Also, know that deleting all your emails doesn’t delete your Gmail account. You can still send and receive emails after you have deleted all your existing emails.
How to Delete All Emails on Gmail at Once?
To start removing your Gmail emails, first, open a web browser on your Windows, Mac, Linux, or Chromebook computer and access the Gmail site.
Log in to your Gmail account on the site. If you’re not sure you want to completely lose access to your emails, consider downloading an archive of your emails.
- When Gmail loads, in the sidebar on the left, click “All Mail.” If you don’t see this option, click “More” to reveal the option.
- In the pane on the right, you will see all your Gmail emails, including your archived emails. To delete these emails, you will have to first select all these emails. Do that by clicking the “Select” option (a square icon) at the top of the Gmail interface.
- Gmail will select all the emails displayed on the current page. To select the emails that are not on this page, at the top of the emails list, click the “Select All X Conversations in All Mail,” where “X” is the number of emails in the “All Mail” folder.
- All your emails are now selected. To start deleting them, at the top of the Gmail interface, click the “Delete” option (a trash icon).
- You will see a “Confirm Bulk Action” box. Here, click “OK.”
- Gmail will start deleting and moving your emails to the Trash folder. To remove your emails for good, you will have to empty the Trash. To do so, in Gmail’s left sidebar, click the “Trash” folder.
- In the pane on the right, at the top, click “Empty Trash Now.”
- In the “Confirm Deleting Messages” box that opens, click “OK.”
- And all your emails except for the ones in the “Spam” folder are now deleted.
- To clear the spam emails, in Gmail’s left sidebar, click “Spam.”
- Then, in the pane on the right, click “Delete All Spam Messages Now.”
Delete Emails in Gmail Using “Select All”:
You can delete everything in your inbox quickly using the “Select All” box at the very top of your inbox when using Gmail on a desktop browser. Click it once, and the first 100 emails (everything on the first page of your inbox) will be selected, with a notice.
Select All checkbox in Gmail:
If you want to select everything in your inbox, go ahead and click the link next to the notice that reads “Select all <number> conversations in inbox” (where <number> is how many conversations you have in your inbox).
Select remaining conversations in your Gmail inbox:
From here you can use the “Delete” trash can icon to move everything to the Bin, where it will be permanently deleted in 30 days. You can expedite the process by clicking “Empty Bin now” to permanently delete everything in the bin at once.
You can also use the “Archive” button to move selected messages to your archive so that they’re out of your inbox but still accessible should you need them.
Use Search, Labels, and More to Mass Delete:
If you’d rather mass delete email based on certain criteria, you can use Gmail’s full suite of search features to perform a query. The easiest way to do this is to use the “Advanced Search” button in the search bar at the top of your inbox.
Access Gmail’s advanced search features:
Use the form that appears to fine-tune your criteria, then hit “Search” to run your query. You’ll see the exact search terms you could have manually input appear in the search bar, along with a list of results.
Build an advanced search query in Gmail:
From here it’s a simple case of using the “Select All” button to select everything (remember to click on the “Select all conversations that match this search” button to include all results) then use the “Delete” or “Archive” button as required. You can do the same with any labels you have created.
How to Delete Archived Emails in Gmail?
If you’re in the habit of archiving messages in Gmail, you can also clear up inbox storage by deleting your archived emails instead of letting them sit there.
In fact, there are several reasons you should delete emails instead of archiving them. To mass delete your archived emails, first retrieve your archived emails by clicking the All-Mail folder.
In the All-Mail folder, you’ll see every email your Gmail account contains, including archived emails. Unfortunately, there’s no way to sort out non-archived messages, but the archived emails will not have the “Inbox” label, and when you select it the Archive icon (a box with a downward arrow on it) will be grayed out.
- Look for emails without Inbox labels to identify archived emails.
- When you find archived emails, check their boxes and hit the “Delete” button (a trash can icon).
- Select archived emails and click the delete (trash can) icon.
Mass-Deleting Emails on the Gmail Mobile App:
If you prefer the Gmail mobile apps for Android and iPhone, you should know you can delete multiple emails, but there’s no option to “Select All” messages or capture all emails that fall into certain search criteria.
You can select more than one email by tapping on the circle that appears next to a message in your inbox. You’ll then see a “Delete” option at the top of the screen.
To really clean up your inbox you’ll need to hop on a desktop browser, log in with your Gmail password, and follow the instructions above.
Go One Further and Delete Your Whole Account:
Are you done with Gmail? You can choose to delete just Gmail or your entire Google Account. If you limit this to just Gmail you can still use other Google services like YouTube, Maps, and Drive.
Alternatively, delete the whole lot and de-Google your life. Now pick one of the three other top free email services to replace it, or up your security game with a secure email provider.
How to delete the entire Gmail inbox?
Obviously, there are times when you may not want to delete every single message in your entire Gmail account, but rather just clear out messages from your Inbox. Here is how to empty Gmail Inbox:
- Pull up your Gmail account via your preferred web browser.
- Select your Inbox (if not already selected). From here, you can use the checkbox at the top left to select all conversations.
- Delete Gmail emails from Inbox.
- This will select every conversation on the first page, but you can click on the blue ‘Select all … messages in Inbox’ option to choose everything.
- Click the Delete icon.
- Delete all Gmail emails from Inbox.
How to Delete All Emails on Gmail at Once on Phone?
When it comes to deleting all Gmail emails at once, it’s important to note that the Gmail mobile app doesn’t offer this feature. You can, however, delete multiple emails simultaneously.
Despite not being the quickest method, this approach is favored by many users for its convenience in tackling an overflowing inbox on the go. Here is how to delete all emails in Gmail app on iOS devices:
- Launch the Gmail mobile app on your iPhone.
- Tap the icon just to the left of an email to ‘tick’ it and reveal tick boxes for all of the other messages you no longer need.
- Delete all emails on Gmail at once on mobile app.
- Click the Bin icon in the top right of your screen.
- (optional) Click the three horizontal lines in the top left of your screen. Go to the Bin section and click Empty Bin now at the top of your screen.
As highlighted earlier, using this method to delete all emails can be quite time-consuming, especially if your inbox has grown significantly.
For a more efficient solution, we suggest turning to the Clean Email app (for iOS and Android users), which we’ll discuss in detail in the next section.
How to Delete All Emails on Gmail at once using the iOS Mail app?
Naturally, this only applies to Apple users and so, if you are on Android, skip to the next section. If Apple Mail is your email client of choice instead of the Gmail mobile app, the steps for removing your messages are the following:
- Open Mail App.
- Under Mailboxes at the top of your screen, select Gmail.
- Click Edit in the top right of your screen.
- Click Edit in the top right of your screen.
- Click Select All in the top left corner.
- Click Move and select the Bin folder to get rid of all unwanted mailings.
- Click Move and select the Bin.
How to Completely Clean Up Gmail Inbox with Clean Email?
The Clean Email app organizes your messages into easy-to-review bundles, allowing you to assign generic actions to similar emails in certain categories. This simplifies inbox management, which used to take hours, and provides an easy way to delete Gmail emails in bulk.
Send emails to Trash automatically with Clean Email:
Once you’ve set your desired criteria, click on the Create Rule button once more. This action will ensure that all future messages from the same sender are handled according to your new rule.
Once the rule is set, you will see it added to the Auto Clean dashboard. From there, you can conveniently manage your automated rules by pausing them when necessary and editing the rule criteria.
While the method above is great for a full inbox clear-out, it might not be the best if you have important or starred emails to keep. If so, you can use Clean Email’s filtering options to delete only certain messages.
This is really useful if you’re trying to delete old emails in Gmail, or just want to delete large messages in Gmail. To use Clean Email’s filters, follow these steps:
- Sign in with your mail account at https://app.clean.email
- Select Inbox from the left-hand side of the page.
- Above the search bar, you can choose to only see emails that are read or unread, messages older than a certain date, or narrow down the search in other ways by clicking the Filters funnel icon.
- All filters feature in Clean Email
- When you tap the Filters funnel icon, you can select emails based on specific labels, starred status, or even by the sender.
- After setting your filters, only the relevant messages will show up. You can then select all of these using the Select All option above the messages.
If you deleted messages you didn’t mean to, don’t worry! There are ways to recover deleted emails from Gmail as long as you haven’t emptied your trash just yet. Follow these steps:
- Find the necessary messages within your Trash folder.
- Click the checkboxes next to the messages you want to retrieve.
- Click the Restore button located at the bottom of the blue action bar.
- Manage your mailbox with Clean Email
- Click Confirm to retrieve the messages.
You may also find the Keep Newest feature useful. It allows you to keep the latest email from a sender while deleting the rest, ensuring you have the most recent correspondence available.
How to Delete Specific Emails in Gmail?
When it comes to email deletion, sometimes a full inbox cleanup isn’t necessary. Instead, you might want to remove specific messages while retaining others.
Let’s go through the process of targeting and deleting certain emails in your Gmail account for a more personalized approach to inbox organization. Here is how to delete emails in Gmail before a certain date using a web browser:
- Sign into your Gmail account in the web browser.
- In the search bar type “before: YYYY/MM/DD” to show all of the email messages you have before that date.
- Delete all Gmail emails before a certain date.
- (optional) To narrow down your search further, type “after: YYYY/MM/DD” alongside the ‘before’ search to show all the messages you have after that date.
- Make sure to select to yourself below the search bar. This step is necessary if you want to avoid deleting your sent items as well.
- Choose emails from a sender to delete them on Gmail.
- Click the empty checkbox located above your messages to select all emails, and then click the Trash bin icon positioned to the right of the checkbox.
- Click Bin icon to delete emails on Gmail.
How to delete all messages in a category?
When your Gmail account is cluttered with emails from different categories, you may want to focus on clearing out one category at a time. Follow these steps:
- Log into your Gmail account.
- Click on the desired category on the left.
- Promotions category in Gmail
- Click the checkbox at the top to select all emails on the current page.
- Click Select all conversations in [category] above your emails.
- Hit the Trash bin icon. The emails will be sent to the Trash folder.
Just as easily, you can target and delete unread Gmail emails in your account. To do this, type “is unread” (no quotes) into the search bar, which will then display all unread messages.
This action can be performed for your Inbox, All Mail, or within a specific category or folder. For instance, typing “is unread in promotions” (no quotes) will display all unread email messages in the Promotions folder.
Conclusion
Keeping your Gmail inbox tidy and well-managed is crucial for effective communication and productivity. This task can be easily achieved by deleting Gmail emails you no longer need, targeting specific ones, or clearing out entire categories.
If manual deletion seems time-consuming, consider leveraging tools like Clean Email for automated email management. This app simplifies the process by bundling similar emails, allowing you to delete them in bulk, thus saving time and enhancing efficiency.
