Gmail is 1 of the email service providers that has a generous corporeality of storage. While this is certainly an advantage, it's also 1 of the biggest drawbacks many users face. As users tin can store gigabytes of free data, cleaning emails becomes a lesser priority, which leaves users thousands of emails to become through when they finally use up almost all of the free storage.

While seeing thousands of unread and unnecessary emails can be intimidating, clearing everything up to start fresh is surprisingly like shooting fish in a barrel and quick. In this guide, we volition testify you how to delete all emails on Gmail, as well as how you tin set upwardly your e-mail to automatically delete former emails and the importance of regularly cleaning upwardly your inbox.

Why Should You Regularly Clean Your Inbox?

If you still have plenty space in your inbox, y'all might be wondering why you lot should clean it up? Cleaning up your email has numerous benefits. Here are the acme reasons:

Most Emails Lose Their Value

The primary purpose of an email is to send and receive information. So, if you lot have received an e-mail from five years agone, it is likely that the information from that electronic mail won't hold any value anymore.

For example, if y'all had an e-mail thread from your ex-employer iii years ago, do y'all call back that whatever information from that thread is valuable? Probably not. That'due south why information technology is best just to keep emails with value and endeavor to remove redundant ones.

Human and Calculator Search Speed

Even if you organize your emails by folders on different projects, it is still easier to visually scan through 50 emails instead of 500 emails. And even if yous e'er utilise Gmail'due south filtering option to reduce the results, it still won't beat the convenience of a cleaner, shorter list.

Non only volition you find it hard to filter through hundreds or thousands of emails, but Gmail will also take longer to filter through a dataset if information technology holds a lot of records. But put, having fewer emails will let you to and Gmail to perform a better search.

Local System Operation

Apart from the search speed, having many emails can too bear on your operating arrangement, especially using a local email program. For instance, the more electronic mail emails you have, the longer it will take for your email program to get-go upwardly and sync with the server.

As a result, your backups volition take longer. And so even if hard disk space is fairly affordable, keeping your mailbox at a minimum volition always be a improve solution.

How to Delete All Emails on Gmail

If you desire to delete every email you have in your Gmail inbox, all you demand is a computer, your Gmail account, and a bit of time. Then, follow the steps below to wipe out your inbox completely:

  1. Open your Gmail account on your browser.
  2. On your Gmail inbox, choose which category you lot want to delete. Gmail inboxes are segmented into iii or four categories: Primary, Social, Updates, and Promotions. The quickest way to delete emails in Gmail is to remove them by category.
  1. Select the tab you want to clear by clicking on it. (In this guide, we volition delete the Promotions tab.)
  2. On the meridian-left side of your screen, bank check the small tick box nether the Search mail search bar. This volition select every e-mail on the page, which is up to fifty emails, and all selected emails will plough into a darker shade. If you have more than 50 promotional emails, doing this won't get everything, but the side by side pace will.
  1. Adjacent, yous will see a small text displayed at the top part of your screen maxim, "All 50 conversations on this page are selected." Select all ten conversations in Promotions." Click the office that says "Select all x conversations in Promotions." This volition let you to select all the emails in your chosen category.
  1. Then, select the Trash icon located underneath the search bar.
  1. In one case yous've clicked the Trash icon, a popular-up window will appear to ostend whether y'all desire to delete X number of emails. Select OK.
  1. After confirming the activity, it volition accept some fourth dimension, particularly if you lot have thousands of emails. In one case the process is complete, you volition come across a little confirmation pop-upward on the bottom-left side of your screen. Merely refresh the page, and you will run into that all your emails have been deleted.

Note: While you've deleted all your emails in the Promotion category, information technology doesn't mean that they were removed from your Gmail account. With Gmail, once you delete an email, it's stored in your trash folder for about 30 days. Just later this catamenia will google permanently delete them. If you desire to expedite this process and delete all your emails for practiced, follow the next steps beneath.

  1. Get to your Trash Folder institute on the left menu navigation of your screen.
  1. On the Trash folder, select Empty Trash, now found on the top part of your screen.
  1. Once you're done, repeat the aforementioned procedure for your other inbox categories, and you'll have a clean Gmail inbox for a fresh start.

How to Delete Emails on Gmail Automatically

If y'all want to brand things more than convenient, y'all can ready up a filter that will permit you lot to delete old emails from your inbox automatically.

  1. Open your Gmail account on your browser.
  2. On your Gmail inbox, click on the Settings icon establish on the acme-right side of your screen. Next, select Run into all settings.
  1. On the Settings page, select Filters and Blocked Addresses. From this menu, select Create a new filter.
  1. On the pop-up box, type older_than:X on the "has the words" field. The 10 on this command should be the timeframe yous prefer for deleting old messages. The control will d for days, west for weeks, m for months, and y for years. For case, if yous want the time frame to be four years, yous modify the X to 4y. Then, select Create filter.
  1. A pop-upwards box will appear request whether you desire to create the filter. Select OK.
  1. Next, check the box beside the option that says Delete it and Likewise apply filter to. Then, select Create filter.

This will automatically delete all your emails older than the date you specified. If you want to delete this filter in the future, follow the steps beneath:

  1. Open your Gmail business relationship on your browser.
  2. On your Gmail inbox, click on the Settings icon found on the top-right side of your screen. Next, select See all settings.
  1. On the Settings page, select Filters and Blocked Addresses and select Delete.
  1. A popular-up box will appear. Only select OK, and Gmail will delete your filter.

Maintain a Make clean Inbox

Knowing how to delete all emails on Gmail will let yous to take a clutter-gratis inbox and ensure that you lot'll receive all essential emails. Apart from that, you tin can now set up your inbox to automatically delete old emails, and then you won't accept to recollect to practise information technology manually.