How to delete all emails in Gmail

(Paradigm credit: Shutterstock)

Knowing how to delete all emails in Gmail will allow yous to have a fresh get-go with your email account, whether it'south full or if yous just want a clear-out. Though costless webmail services don't restrict storage space as much as they did in the early years. clearing your inbox can even so come in handy for a number of reasons.

Possibly your inbox has become cluttered over the years, or mayhap you've archived all your emails offline and desire to articulate up some web space. Whatsoever the reason, it's a relatively simple task to start anew in Gmail. Hither's our guide on how to delete all emails in Gmail.

1. Select the category of email you lot want to delete

Gmail segments email into Primary, Social and Promotions categories.

The easiest manner to delete all emails in Gmail is to tackle each category one past one, and I'm going to demonstrate with the "Promotions" segment for the purposes of this tutorial. Select the tab you want to clear with a click.

Step 1: Select category — (Image credit: Alan Martin)

2. Press the tick box to select all

Nestled between the search bar and the tab selection is a small tick box highlighted higher up. Tick it, and every email on the page will be selected. But if y'all have more than 50 emails to delete, that won't go everything, so we'll deal with that in our next step.

Step 2: Select all — (Paradigm credit: Alan Martin)

3. Add in the emails non displayed on the page

Once yous press the tick box, everything on the page (bated from the inbox ads) will be selected, only an easily missable text will likewise appear above the tab pick: "All fifty conversations on this page are selected. Select all X conversations in Promotions." Press the 2nd sentence and everything in the category will now exist highlighted as prepare for deletion.

Step 3: Add emails not displayed — (Image credit: Alan Martin)

four. Hitting the delete button

Press the fourth icon along underneath the search bar — it'south shaped like a trash bin. You'll get a popup asking you lot if you're sure you want to delete that many emails, so make your decision.

Step 4: Delete — (Image credit: Alan Martin)

five. Await confirmation

If you have a lot of emails, this volition take a little while. I had just 3,404 to delete and information technology still took effectually 15 seconds.

As you can see below, one time the process is complete, you get a piddling confirmation pop-up in the bottom left-paw corner. Note, too, that this doesn't seem to have deleted everything, but a quick refresh revealed everything was really gone.

Step 5: Confirmation — (Image credit: Alan Martin)

6. Empty the trash and repeat the process for other tabs

Y'all don't need to do annihilation more, so consider this an optional step, but your deleted emails will sit down in your trash folder for 30 days earlier Google actually deletes them.

If you want to expedite the process, you tin head to the Trash folder and empty it manually. Once washed, echo steps 2-6 with the Main and Social tabs, and your Gmail volition be completely empty.

Step 6: confirmation — (Image credit: Alan Martin)

At present you know how to delete all emails in Gmail, you might desire to check out some other Gmail guides, including how to schedule an email in Gmail and how to alter your countersign in Gmail.

Freelance contributor Alan has been writing most tech for over a decade, covering phones, drones and everything in betwixt. Previously Deputy Editor of tech site Alphr, his words are found all over the web and in the occasional magazine too. When not weighing upward the pros and cons of the latest smartwatch, yous'll probably notice him tackling his e'er-growing games backlog. Or, more probable, playing Spelunky for the millionth time.