How to empty your inbox on gmail

Why Delete All Emails on Gmail You No Longer Need?

Before we explain how to delete Gmail emails, let’s look at why you may want to delete these emails in the first place. Well, there are actually two reasons why you’ll want to do this.

The first is you could be missing something important. With a cluttered inbox it is difficult or even impossible to perfectly keep track of everything. It is easy to slip up and not see something that will turn out to be vital for work, or leave you accidentally ignoring a social event. If you learn how to delete all emails Gmail, you can keep on top of things, and will find yourself being much more productive.

The next reason is that it is just stressful having a messy inbox. We can spend months, or, let's be honest, years, looking at that unread list grow with stuff we never took the time to go through, delete, and organize. It is distracting, and the feeling you get cleaning out completely and starting fresh would be more than worth it even if there wasn't the productivity boost.

How to Completely Clean Up Your Gmail Inbox

Learning how to delete emails in Gmail can be complicated at first if you’re wanting to remove a large number of messages.

Luckily, there are different methods on how to delete all emails from Gmail depending on if you are on a web browser, iOS mail, or the Gmail app. Each method has its pros and cons, check out this video to quickly run through all of them.

How to Delete All Emails on Gmail At Once on Gmail App

Are you trying to figure out how to delete all emails in Gmail app? Unfortunately, you can't delete all Gmail emails at once using the Gmail app.

However, you can remove multiple messages if you still want to proceed with this mobile app. While this is not the quickest option, for many users it is still the easiest way on how to clean up their mailboxes. Follow the steps below:

1. Launch the Gmail mobile app on your iPhone.
2. 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.

3. Click the Bin icon in the top right of your screen.
4. (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.

However, this option can take an extremely long time. This is particularly true if you have let your inbox grow to unmanageable levels. For a quicker solution, we are going to look at other methods.

Alternatively, iPhone users can delete all emails on iPhone by accessing the desktop version of Gmail through Safari. Once you access https://mail.google.com/ from your Safari browser and ensure you’ve pulled up the desktop view, you’ll be able to select all the messages in a specific folder and delete them that way.

Not an iPhone user? Well, if you’re wanting to know how to delete all emails at once on Android, you’ll need to either use the tedious method listed above or take advantage of a third-party app like Clean Email because you can’t use Chrome to access the desktop version of Gmail in the same way you can from Safari.

How to Delete All Emails on Gmail At Once on iOS Mail

Naturally, this only applies to Apple users and so, if you are on Android, skip to the next section. If you are an iOS Mail app user and Apple Mail is your email client of choice instead of the Gmail mobile app, the steps for removing your messages are the following:

1. Open Mail App.
2. Under Mailboxes at the top of your screen, select Gmail.
3. Click Edit in the top right of your screen.

4. Click Select All in the top left corner.
5. Click Move and select the Bin folder to get rid of all unwanted mailings.

How to Delete All Emails on Gmail At Once on Web Browser

Although there’s no explanation on how to delete all emails at once on Gmail through the Gmail mobile app, removing them through your web browser isn’t nearly as complicated.

💡 Note: You can learn how to delete all Gmail emails with just a couple of clicks — but you need to be very careful with deleting messages since it can’t be undone.

If you’re sure you want to delete all of your messages in Gmail (i.e. All Mail), you can do so by following these steps:

1. Navigate to Gmail in your web browser and sign in.
2. Once you log into your inbox, scroll down on the left side and select All Mail to view all messages in your Gmail. This will include mail from your Primary inbox as well as any other category-specific boxes. (Note: you may need to first click on the dropdown labeled More on the left side to see All Mail.)

3. Within All Mail, click on the check box on the left side directly above all of your messages.

4. After you click the checkbox, a message will appear above your messages that reads: “All conversations on this page are selected.” Next to that in blue, you will see another message that says, “Select all conversations in All Mail.” Click that blue text to select every message in your Gmail inbox.
5. Now, click on Delete (the trash can icon).

6. Because this is a bulk action that is irreversible, you will receive a message that will ask you to “confirm bulk action.” Click OK to continue.
7. Once you select OK, all messages from your Gmail will move into the Trash folder. From here, you can navigate to your trash to delete mail forever. Remember, once you do this, you will not be able to recall these emails.

Obviously, there are times when you may not want to delete every single message in your entire Gmail, but rather just clear out messages from your Inbox. To do this:

1. Pull up your Gmail account via your preferred web browser.
2. Select your Inbox (if not already selected).

3. From here, you can use the checkbox at the top left to select all conversations. This will select every conversation on the first page, but you can scroll to the blue text that says “Select all conversations” to choose everything.

4. Click Delete.
5. Navigate to your Trash folder and repeat this process to permanently delete these messages.

The same method listed above is also how to delete all promotions in Gmail — you just select the Promotions inbox instead of your main inbox. Alternatively, you can select messages based on type (read, unread, starred, unstarred) by clicking on the dropdown menu next to the checkbox mentioned in Step 3.

Once you select read, unread, or starred, you can click Delete to remove these selected messages.

💡 Note: You cannot select all conversations in the same way if you select them based on type, so you will have to continue this process if you have messages across multiple pages in your inbox.

How to Delete all Gmail Emails Before a Certain Date on Gmail

On a web browser you can also further narrow down your deleting process, for example, by selecting the dates you want to remove your mail across:

1. Sign into your account in your web browser.
2. In the search bar type "before: YYYY/MM/DD" to show all of the emails you have before that date.

3. (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.
4. Select To Me below the search bar, this is important as, otherwise, you will find yourself deleting your sent items as well.

5. (optional) Select Unread below the search bar if you only want to remove the unread mail.
6. Click the empty select square on the top left of your screen.
7. Select and click the bin icon to the right of the select square.

8. Click OK to the confirmation box.
9. (optional) Clear out your bin by selecting the "Bin" category in the left and clicking Empty Bin Now in the upper right of your screen, again clicking OK to the confirmation box.

You can now fully customize which messages you are deleting from your account. Learn more about how to delete old emails in our other post.

How the Clean Email App Can Help

Clean Email inbox cleaner organizes your messages into easy to review bundles to assign generic actions to similar emails of certain categories. This allows you to simplify inbox management which used to take hours, not to mention provide an easy way to delete Gmail emails.

Once you set up an account with Clean Email, it’s easy to use this app to clear out your Gmail inbox. In fact, the app can help you learn how to delete all Gmail emails at once without jumping through all the hoops Gmail’s desktop and mobile apps have in place.

To delete emails from your Gmail inbox (not All Mail), follow these steps:

1. Go to https://app.clean.email and sign in with your account.
2. Select Inbox from the options on the left-hand side.
3. Once your inbox appears, click Select All option under the top banner if you want to remove all of your messages from Inbox. In case you need to delete only several messages, mark the empty checkbox on the left from the email groups of your choice.
4. Once all the emails are selected, push the Trash button.


5. A message will appear asking you if you want to move these items to Trash, or if you’d like to move these plus similar future emails to the Trash. If you mark the checkbox ‘Selected and future similar emails’ box, you’ll create an Auto Clean rule that will be applied to all messages from this sender/senders in the future.


6. Click the ‘Move to Trash and Create Rule’ button and you’re done!

Although the above option will help you completely clear out your inbox, you may not want to use this option if you have starred messages or other emails you’d like to keep.

If that’s the case, you’ll want to use Clean Email’s filtering selection to just delete certain emails. This can help you if you’ve been trying to figure out how to delete all unread emails in Gmail across each inbox, or if you’ve been trying to figure out how to just delete large messages in Gmail.

To use Clean Email’s filters, follow these steps:

1. Sign in with your mail account at https://app.clean.email
2. Select Inbox from the left-hand side of the page.
3. To the right of the search bar, you can choose to only see emails that are read or unread, messages with or without stars, or narrow down the search in other ways with the All Filters option.
4. If you select All Filters, you will see several options appear under the Search Inbox bar. You can select whether you want to only select emails with a certain label (the labels you’ve applied to messages in your inbox), emails of a certain size, or mail sent and/or received between certain dates.
5. Once you’ve made the appropriate filter selections, only those messages will appear below. You can then Select All of these messages with the Select All option above the messages.
6. Now, push Trash to delete all of the selected messages.

In addition to deleting messages with certain labels, Clean Email can help if you’re wondering how to delete all emails from one sender, since this option isn’t available in the Gmail mobile app.

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:

1. Find the necessary messages within your Trash folder.
2. Click the checkboxes next to the messages you want to retrieve.
3. Click Move to, located at the top of the page.
4. Select a folder from the drop-down menu or return it to your Inbox.

Conclusion

Think about how much time you spend wasting on deleting messages manually or about how much stress you experience when searching through your cluttered mailbox. If you have decided to delete all your Gmail emails, the Clean Email app is here to save you time and make it easier.

How to Delete All Emails on Gmail - FAQs