How to select and delete multiple emails in gmail

When It’s Time to Bulk Delete Gmail Emails

Since Marie Kondo published her first book on organizing, countless people around the world have applied her method (known as the KonMari method) to declutter their lives by getting rid of all things that “don’t spark joy.”

The same method can also be applied to our digital lives and our cluttered inboxes in particular. But to do so, you need to learn how to mass delete emails on Gmail, and that’s exactly what we explain in this article.

You can delete Gmail emails in bulk using the native email organization features present in this mail provider or with the help of third-party tools, and we describe both methods in the following sections.

How to Mass Delete Emails on Gmail

Let’s say that your inbox is so neglected and overflowing with useless messages that you’re ready to apply the Gmail bulk delete to get rid of everything in one go. Here’s what you need to do:

1. Log in to your mail account.
2. Navigate to the Inbox folder.
3. Click the top checkbox.
4. Click the “Select all [number] conversations in Inbox” option.
5. Click the Delete button.

All messages that were present in your inbox are now in the Trash folder. If you know for sure that you will never want to recover deleted emails from Gmail, you can open the Trash folder, and click the Empty Trash now option. Alternatively, you can wait for 30 days for the Trash folder to be automatically emptied.

The video below shows the entire mass delete Gmail emails process from start to finish, so make sure to watch it if you’re still not sure what to do.

How to Mass Delete Specific Emails on Gmail

Okay, so it’s easy to mass delete Gmail emails regardless of their content, age, and other criteria. But what if you want to learn how to delete all promotions in Gmail or how to delete all unread emails in Gmail ?

Fortunately, that’s easy too! Let’s take a look at several common scenarios, including those mentioned above:

How to delete all promotions:

1. Log in to your mail account.
2. Navigate to the Promotions category.
3. Click the top checkbox.
4. Click the “Select all [number] conversations in Inbox” option.
5. Click the Delete button.

How to delete all unread messages:

1. Log in to your mail account.
2. Type "is:unread" in the search bar and hit Enter.
3. Click the top checkbox.
4. Click the “Select all [number] conversations in Inbox” option.
5. Click the Delete button.

How to delete old emails in Gmail:

1. Log in to your inbox on a computer.
2. Type "before:YYYY/M/D" (replace YYYY/M/D with the desired date, such as 2022/2/22) in the search bar and hit Enter.
3. Click the top checkbox.
4. Click the “Select all [number] conversations in Inbox” option.
5. Click the Delete button.

How to delete all emails from one sender:

1. Log in to your inbox on a computer.
2. Type the email address or the name of the sender whose messages you want to remove in the search bar and hit Enter.
3. Click the top checkbox.
4. Click the “Select all [number] conversations in Inbox” option.
5. Click the Delete button.

As you can see, anyone can learn how to mass delete Gmail emails that fit certain criteria. Regardless of which messages you clean up, don’t forget to empty the Trash folder as well to free up precious storage space.

How to Delete Gmail Emails in Bulk on iPhone and Android

The Gmail app for Android and iOS, unfortunately, doesn’t make it possible to mass delete emails on Gmail without you first selecting individual messages one by one. Still, being able to clean up multiple messages at once is better than not being to do so at all.

Here’s how to mass delete emails on the Gmail app:

1. Open the mobile app on your Android or iOS device.
2. Navigate to your Inbox or any other location where the messages you want to remove can be found.
3. Tap the thumbnail to the left of each message you want to remove.
4. Tap the Delete button to remove the selected messages.
5. Empty the Bin folder to free up the storage space occupied by the messages you’ve just deleted.

How to Delete Gmail Emails in Bulk Using a Third-Party Tool

While it’s certainly possible to clean up messages in bulk using nothing but Gmail’s own email management features, you may find it difficult or impossible to bulk remove messages based on very specific criteria.

For example, you can’t quickly and easily delete large emails in Gmail while automatically excluding messages sent to you by a specific sender. That’s where third-party inbox management tools like Clean Email come in.

Clean Email offers a wide range of email filtering options, allowing you to clean up multiple messages based on its Smart Views, custom search filters, and other criteria.

This is how easy it is to remove all large messages using the app:

1. Go to: //app.clean.email/ and sign in with your mail address.
2. Select the “Emails larger than 10 MB” Smart View.
3. Click the Select all option.
4. Click the Trash button.

Of course, Clean Email lets you change the size of messages you want to remove, and you can easily apply more filters at the same time to, for example, clean up large messages that are older than 1 year.

If there are some senders or categories of emails that you definitely don’t want the app to clean up, then you can go to Preferences → Excluded Emails and add your exclusions there before cleaning.

Besides its Gmail bulk delete capabilities, Clean Email can also unsubscribe you from unwanted subscriptions, block annoying senders, automate commonly performed inbox management actions, and more—all while respecting your privacy and keeping your messages secure.

How to Mass Delete Emails on Gmail - FAQs