Many of us receive many personal and business emails in our Gmail inboxes daily.
Your inbox will overflow if you don’t check and manage it regularly. Later, it becomes difficult to find the necessary emails, and you have to rely on the search box for that.
Maybe you are going through similar situations right now. That’s why you searched for how to mass delete emails in Gmail.
Today, we will check how to delete all your Gmail emails in 1–2 clicks.
Contents
The “Golden Rule” of Mass Deletion: Use a Computer
Before we click anything, we need to address the elephant in the room. The Gmail mobile app is terrible for mass deletion.
If you use the app (iOS or Android), you are limited to selecting 50 emails at a time. It does not have the “Select All Conversations” feature we need to delete thousands of emails at once.
The Fix: Log in to your Gmail account via a web browser (Chrome, Safari, or Edge) on a laptop or desktop computer.
Don’t have a computer? Don’t worry. We have a workaround for mobile users in the last section of this guide.
How to Delete Gmail Emails in Bulk
Here’s how to delete thousands of Gmail emails easily.
1. Sign in to your Gmail account first. Gmail organizes your incoming emails in four tabs—Primary, Promotions, Social, and Updates.
Visit a tab to mass delete emails.
2. Click the checkbox that appears at the top.
This will select all emails displayed on the first page of your current tab. By default, Gmail shows 10 conversations per page. You can change it for up to 100 conversations through settings.
It will take time to delete all emails, especially if you have thousands of emails in your inbox.
No matter how many emails you have in your Gmail tab, there is an easy way to delete them all simultaneously.
A message will appear at the top when you click the checkbox. It would be like this,
“All 10 conversations on this page are selected. Select all 1,548 conversations in Primary”.
Click on the second line that appears in blue. Then, all the emails in that tab will be selected.
Tap the bin icon at the top to mass delete selected emails. That’s it. You’ve successfully deleted thousands of emails on Gmail in 1–2 clicks.
Repeat this step to delete emails in certain categories (Promotions, Forums, Social, and Updates), labels, spam, sent mails, etc.
How to Delete All Emails from a particular sender
Here’s how to delete all emails you received from a certain email address,
1. Sign in to your Gmail account.
2. Enter the sender’s name or email address in the search box. Gmail suggests matching records in a drop-down. Select your target address and hit enter.
Click the checkbox to select all emails displayed on the page. If more conversations match your search criteria, a message ‘All 10 conversations on this page are selected. Select all conversations that match this search appear at the top.
Click Select all conversations to bulk select all emails from the sender.
Tap the Delete icon at the top to mass delete all Gmail emails in the selection.
How to Delete Gmail Emails before a Certain Date
Sometimes, you may want to delete older emails you received 6 months or 1 year ago. Let us check how you can do it.
1. Sign in to Gmail first.
2. Enter your target date in this format, before: YYYY/MM/DD in the search box. To find and delete all emails you received before July 5, 2021, enter before: 2021/7/5.
Click the checkbox to select all emails and delete.
Use the following search operator to find and locate all emails you received after a certain date (July 5, 2021).
after: 2021/7/5
To delete emails in a particular period, use the following search format.
after:YYYY/M/D before:YYYY/M/D
When searching for emails from January 31, 2021, to January 30, 2022, it will look like this,
after: 2021/1/31 before: 2022/1/30
Other search operators you can try:
older_than:1y
older_than:6m (6 months)
larger:10M (By size)
How to Delete all Read or Unread Emails in Gmail Inbox
Do you want to delete all read or unread emails in Gmail? Here’s a quick way,
1. Sign in to Gmail and enter the following search operators in your search box.
To find unread emails,
label:unread
is:unread
To find read emails,
label:read
is:read
Hit enter.
Select emails and tap the delete button to erase. Gmail will send all deleted emails to Trash and keep them for up to 30 days. During this period, you can access and restore them if needed.
How to Mass Delete Gmail Emails on Mobile
If you don’t have access to a computer, you can still do this from your phone, but you cannot use the Gmail App.
- Open your mobile browser (Chrome, Safari, etc.).
- Go to gmail.com and log in.
- The Trick: Open your browser’s menu (the three dots or the “AA” icon).
- Select “Request Desktop Site.”
- The screen will look tiny (like a shrunken computer screen), but you will now have access to the “Select All” checkbox and search operators mentioned above.
- Pinch and zoom to tap the buttons.
Read How to Create a New Folder in Gmail
