It’s never good to see that message pop up in Gmail: “You’re running low on storage space.”
As the notification says, you might want to “Try freeing up space or purchase additional storage.” But what if neither option works for you?
Luckily, you can delete multiple emails in Gmail all at once, including all of a certain type of email or even all the emails in your mailbox.
How to mass-delete specific kinds of emails on desktop
How to delete all Gmail emails at once
How to mass-delete Gmail emails on iOS
How to mass-delete Gmail emails on Android
Use expiring emails
Why delete your emails in Gmail?
Lots of people either archive their emails or just let them accumulate in their inbox indefinitely.
However, there are three common reasons to consign your read emails to the trash:
- You’re running out of storage and need to free up space to avoid buying a paid account.
- You want to “secure” emails containing sensitive information — by removing them from existence. It may sound drastic, but it could make sense if you’re sure you’ll never need them again. A deleted email can’t be stolen in the event of a hack or data breach. It’s the modern equivalent of “Burn after reading.” Alternatively, in a work context you may need to delete emails to comply with your company’s data retention policy.
- You’re emptying your inbox as a precursor to deleting your Gmail account(new window) to protect your privacy. If you leave messages in Gmail, then Google will continue to have access to your data.
Important to note: You may want to consider exporting your emails from Gmail before deleting them if you want to keep a record of them somewhere (such as on an encrypted external hard drive). You could also import them to a new email provider if you’re switching away from Gmail. Proton Mail offers a one-click solution to migrate your mailbox to encrypted cloud storage using Easy Switch.
How to mass-delete specific kinds of emails on desktop
There are lots of times you might want to prune your inbox by deleting certain types of email.
Perhaps you no longer need the emails from a particular sender. Maybe all the emails you received over a decade ago are now redundant. Or you might wish to purge all correspondence from a particular company.
It would take a long time to delete those emails one by one, but Gmail lets you clear them in bulk.
Archiving: a quick note to begin
Rather than deleting your emails, you may wish to archive them.
While deleting emails frees up storage space, archiving them just moves them to a different location. That means they still count toward your total storage allowance — but on the flipside, you can always access them again if you want to.
If archiving is your goal, then as we go through the different ways to delete emails in Gmail, at the final step simply remember to hit Archive instead of Delete.
The icon for Delete is the trash can: