How to Delete All Emails on Gmail (2024)

Apr. 18, 2024

With Google offering only 15GB of drive storage, you can’t exactly afford to let any kind ofjunkpile up. While you can get rid of unwanted data from your Google Drive fairly easily, filtering and deleting emails is a massive hassle. That’s probably why you are here, looking up how to delete all emails on Gmail in one go. If that’s the case, read on to know all about it.

Delete All Emails on Gmail (PC)

If you are super frustrated with junk emails on your Gmail account and don’t know where to even start, you can choose to delete all your emails and start anew. Here’s how to do that:

Let’s say that you don’t want to delete all your emails at one go and rather, yourread, unread, starred, inbox,or other emails within a specific timeframe. In that case, you can make use of theAdvanced Searchfunctionality of Gmail to filter and sort out such emails. Let me show you how:

To make it easier to understand, we have further divided this panel into different sections. Here’s how you need to specify these settings:

First, we have theFromandTosections in the Advanced Search panel. So, let’s say that your bank has been troubling you with a lot of promotional emails. Specify the email IDs of such senders in the From box and in the To box, of course, your Gmail address will come in. The receiver address comes in handy when you are trying to delete those files you have sent yourself for safekeeping purposes.

After you enter the sender’s address, you will see the option to specify the subject of the emails you are trying to delete. I have found this option to be a bit of a hassle as you won’t know the subject of most junk emails.

So, next, move on to specify those annoying words like “discounts” and “offers” that these promotional emails contain. Enter these words in the ‘Has the words‘ box. If you can specify the words that these emails will not have, you can go ahead and do that in theDoesn’t havepanel. That will further narrow down your search.

Then, we move on to specifying the size of the emails you are trying to delete. Sometimes, you often end up mailing images and files to yourself. Well, I often do that, and these files can stack up over time, taking your Google Drive Storage in the red. We don’t want that. So, you can specify the size of these files like this:

The drop-down menu lets you select a combination ofgreater than/less thanandMB/KB/Bytes. Select accordingly.

Finally, we have arrived at selecting the category of emails you want to delete. Do so by clicking on the drop-down menu adjacent to theSearchoption. This particular drop-down menu lists all the categories, including custom labels you have created. Simply click on the desired category of emails to further narrow down the search.

Once you are done specifying all these categories, simply hit the Search button.

That will reveal all the emails that match your search. Then, as you did with deleting all emails on Gmail, click the central checkbox at the top to select all these emails -> Select all conversations that match this search -> Click Dete, and then OK.

Now, it is not that you can’t mass delete your Gmail emails from your Android or iOS phone. You can do so. However, it does not exactly work as intended. You can long press on a mail and check theSelect allbox in the top left corner. However, it doesn’t selectallyour emails in one go. Instead, it does so in batches of 50. As you scroll down, you can keep selecting your emails in batches of 50 and hit the delete icon to delete them. Like this:

Or, you can choose to right-swipe and delete your emails individually on the Android and iOS mobile apps. However, by default, the swipe action archives your emails. The good thing is that you can set it to delete emails instead. Since the iOS and Android Gmail app interfaces are similar, I’m using the Android version to outline the steps. Take a look:

However, since advanced search does not work with the Gmail app and these methods are rather time-consuming, ultimately, you will have to fall upon the web version to clear your emails easily.

Do note that simply deleting your emails whether on the web version or mobile does not delete thempermanently.Instead, they are moved to Gmail’s trash/bin folder. You will have to clear this folder out as well to get rid of them completely. Here’s how:

Note:Emails that are deleted and moved to trash on Gmail are automatically deleted permanently after 30 days.

With that, you will be deleting your unwanted emails on Gmail permanently. Now, if you have an inactive Gmail account lying around, deleting it altogether is a better idea. However, do note that deleting is the last resort, as you basically delete your Google account in the process. Now, that deletes everything, including data from the associated Google Drive, game accounts created using the ID, and so on. With that being said, let us know in the comments if this guide came in handy or not.

Sagnik is a tech aficionado who can never say “no” to dipping his toes into unknown waters of tech or reviewing the latest gadgets. He is also a hardcore gamer, having played everything from Snake Xenzia to Dead Space Remake.