How to Delete All Emails on Gmail (2024)

With Google offering only 15GB of drive storage, you can’t exactly afford to let any kind of junk pile 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.

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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:

• Head over to Gmail on the web browser of your choice. Then, once you are signed in, from the left panel, select the category you want to delete all the emails for.
• If your left panel is unexpanded, expand it using the hamburger menu in the top-right corner. Then, if you want to delete all your emails, then, click on the More drop-down button.
• Here, you will see the All Mail category. Click on it.

• Then, at the very top of your emails, you will see a central checkbox. Beside it, you will see a small drop-down arrow icon. Click on it and select the types of emails you want to mass delete. In this case, we’ll select the All option, since we want to get rid of all the mails.

• However, this action only selects the 50 emails that appear on a single page. To select all your emails, you will have to click on the “Select all [total number of emails] conversations in All Mail” message at the top.

• Next, click on the delete icon at the top symbolized by a recycle bin icon, and hit OK on the confirmation popup window.

Bulk Delete Emails Using Advanced Search

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

• When using Gmail on the web, tap on the Advanced Search icon right beside the Gmail search bar at the top.

• A big overwhelming window with several tweakable settings will pop up.

• Now, you have to tap on each setting and specify it. You can also select a custom time frame. Select a category, or subject, and make sure to narrow the search down as much as possible.

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

Delete Emails From Particular Sender and Receiver

First, we have the From and To sections 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.

Delete Emails Containing Specific Words

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 the Doesn’t have panel. That will further narrow down your search.

Delete Emails based on Size

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 of greater than/less than and MB/KB/Bytes. Select accordingly.

Delete Emails By Date Range

Now, it’s time to specify the date range of these emails you want to delete. This is important, as it allows you to really narrow down the search and prevent the deletion of recent emails that may be important. So, let’s say 2024 emails are important to you, and if you want to delete much older emails spanning from 2021-2023, you can do that here.

In the Date within drop-down menu, you can select up to 1 year of emails. Then, in the calendar box beside it, if you select let’s say January of 2021, that will target emails from January 2020 to January 2021.

Delete Emails Category-Wise

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 the Search option. 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.

How to Mass Delete Emails on Gmail (Android and iOS)

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 the Select all box in the top left corner. However, it doesn’t select all your 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:

• When in the Gmail mobile app for Android or iOS, tap on the hamburger icon in the top left corner.
• Then, scroll down to find the Settings panel. When in Settings, tap on General settings.

• Here, you will see the option to set Swipe actions. Select this.
• You will see the options to CHANGE the Right or Left swipe actions here. Select the one you want to change and select Delete from the available options.

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.

Permanently Delete Your Emails on Gmail

Do note that simply deleting your emails whether on the web version or mobile does not delete them permanently. 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:

• Navigate to the Trash/Bin folder from the left panel.

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

• Now, hit the Empty Trash/Bin now button at the top and hit OK in the confirmation window.

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.