How to mass delete emails in Gmail

Updated Nov 10, 2026, 9:13 PM EST Tim has been covering technology for almost 20 years, in that time spanning a broad range of topics from security to product reviews. He is especially focused on the Apple ecosystem, productivity, and consumer advice. Over the years Tim has written thousands of articles, reviews, and round-ups in addition to producing video content and original photography. A graduate of journalism, he found his footing as a freelancer with a laptop and loves how he is able to work from practically anywhere. Now a Senior Editor for iPhone, Mac, and Smart Home at How-To Geek, Tim still loves to write. He can also be found crafting round-ups and productivity posts for the Zapier blog. Earlier in his career Tim spent nearly a decade as a writer and eventually Apple section editor for MakeUseOf. Tim currently lives in Brisbane, Australia. Outside of work he loves to hike and work out, play video games, and spend quality time with his wonderful partner and two cats Inka and Roger. Has your Gmail inbox become cluttered and overrun? Maybe you're looking for a quick way to mass delete newsletters or emails from a specific domain name. Here's how to tidy up your Gmail account in record time. Delete emails in Gmail using "Select All" You can delete everything in your inbox quickly using the "Select All" box at the very top of your inbox when using Gmail on a desktop browser. Click it once, and the first 50 emails (everything on the first page of your inbox) will be selected, with a notice. If you want to select everything in your inbox, go ahead and click the link next to the notice that reads "Select all conversations in inbox" (where is how many conversations you have in your inbox). From here, you can use the "Delete" trash can icon to move everything to the Bin, where it will be permanently deleted in 30 days. You can expedite the process by clicking "Empty Bin now" to permanently delete everything in the bin at once. You can also use the "Archive" button to move selected messages to your archive so that they're out of your inbox but still accessible should you need them. Use search, labels, and more to mass delete Gmail's search bar accepts operators that let you slice your mailbox into precise subsets. This is faster than scrolling through All Mail and guessing. The in:archive operator finds all messages you've archived, and you can combine it with others like older_than:1y, larger:10M, or category:promotions to target specific clutter. For example, in:archive older_than:1y has:attachment larger:10M finds archived, year-old messages with large attachments. Once your search returns results, click the checkbox at the top to select the first 50, then click the link that says "Select all conversations that match this search" to grab everything. Hit the trash can icon to move them all to Trash. You can also use the archive icon to pull them out of your inbox without deleting, which is useful if you're not sure yet. Remember that you can use the wildcard asterisk (*) to specify broader search terms. As an example, if you want to find every email received from the @gmail.com domain, search for "*@gmail.com" in the "From" field. From here it's a simple case of using the "Select All" button to select everything (remember to click on the "Select all conversations that match this search" button to include all results) and then use the "Delete" or "Archive" button as required. You can do the same with any labels you have created. How to delete archived emails in Gmail A common misconception: archiving frees up storage. It doesn't. Archiving only strips the Inbox label; the message still lives in your account and counts against your quota. If you've been archiving for years, you may have thousands of messages quietly consuming space. The fastest way to find and delete them is the in:archive operator—type it in the search bar, select all, and delete. Before you do, consider keeping anything with legal or financial significance: tax documents, warranties, or records your employer may require. If you're unsure what to keep, our guide to freeing up Gmail storage walks through a similar decision process. To mass delete your archived emails, first retrieve your archived emails by clicking the "All Mail" folder (you might need to reveal it first by clicking the "More" arrow. Select the messages you want to remove and hit the trash can icon. For a more targeted pass, combine in:archive with other operators: in:archive category:promotions older_than:2y pulls up old promotional emails you almost certainly don't need. When you find archived emails, check their boxes and hit the "Delete" button (a trash can icon). Use labels and more advanced search techniques to find old messages you really don't need. For example, searching for "has:nouserlabels" will reveal messages that haven't been labeled. You could combine this with the "older_than:1y" and "is:read" flags to find only unlabelled messages that are at least one year old and have been read. Mass-deleting emails on the Gmail mobile app On the Gmail app for Android or iPhone, long-press an email to enter selection mode, then tap "Select all" at the top to grab the first 50. Tap the trash icon to delete. For archived emails specifically, tap the search bar, type in:archive, and repeat the same select-and-delete process. The mobile interface doesn't show the "Select all conversations that match this search" link, so for very large cleanups a desktop session is faster. Now at the top of the screen, check the "Select All" box to pick all 50 messages on the first page of your inbox. From here, use the "Delete" button to bin them all. Repeat as necessary, or hop on a desktop browser, log in, and follow the instructions above to get rid of everything at once. Go One Further and Delete Your Whole Account Are you done with Gmail? You can choose to delete just Gmail or your entire Google Account. If you limit this to just Gmail you can still use other Google services like YouTube, Maps, and Drive. Alternatively, delete the whole lot and de-Google your life and pick another free email service to replace it.