Do you have more emails than you can handle? Find out here how to delete all messages from Gmail at once: absolutely all emails, all mail from a sender, all emails arriving in the future, and more.
First, 960 Billion Suns
When something spins, it wants to fly away. It takes a string and pulling to keep it spinning.
When a galaxy spins around another, bigger one, gravity does the pulling. That very gravity can be used to “weigh” the parent galaxy.
By this measure, the Milky Way—stars, planets, dust, dark matter and all—has a mass of 960 billion times the sun.
Your Gmail feels heavy like that, and you suspect lots of dark matter? Let us toss and spin, then let go of all emails en masse:
How to Delete All Messages from Gmail
First, decide which emails you want to remove from your account:
Mass-Delete Absolutely All Gmail Email
Time needed: 3 minutes
To remove all email messages from your Gmail account in one go using a desktop browser:
- Click in the Search mail field.
Gmail keyboard shortcut: With Gmail keyboard shortcuts enabled, you can also press
/. - Type
in:anywhereto find absolutely all mail in Gmail.Be more specific: Different search criteria let you selectively delete specific emails; you can, for instance, delete all unread messages, or those exchanged with an email address (see below).
- Press Enter.
- Click the Select checkbox atop the search results to select all conversations on the current page.
Keyboard shortcut: You can also press * followed by A.
- Now click Select all conversations that match this search if it appears under the toolbar.
- Click Delete in the toolbar.
Important: This will move all messages from your Gmail Inbox, all labels, All Mail and the Spam folder to your Gmail Trash.
- Optional: Empty the Gmail Trash to have all mail permanently deleted at once.
Auto-purging: Gmail will automatically remove the messages from the Trash after a certain grace period.
Important: Even after emptying the Trash in Gmail, Gmail will keep copies of messages (in backups) for a certain time.
Getting rid of Gmail, too? How to Cancel a Gmail Account and Email Address
Have Gmail Delete All New Messages Automatically
To have Gmail delete all messages as they arrive at your address using a filter:
- Click the Show search options icon in the Gmail Search mail field.
- Type
*under From. - Click Create filter.
- Click OK if asked to Confirm creating filter.
- Make sure Delete it is checked under When a message arrives that matches this search:.
- Click Create filter.
Important: This will set up a Gmail filter that automatically moves all incoming mail to the Trash, whence it will be deleted automatically.
Forwarding: If you have set up Gmail to forward mail automatically, this will still happen.
How to Mass Delete All Messages From a Sender
Using search and, optionally, rules you can also delete all emails from a particular sender in Gmail.
Delete All Unread Emails
With a bit of searching magic, you can delete all unread emails in Gmail at once, too.
How to Delete All Messages from Gmail: FAQ
Can I delete all emails using the Gmail app for iOS or Android?
No
There is, unfortunately, no simple way to delete all emails in the Gmail apps for Android or iOS.
You can, however, open Gmail’s desktop version in a mobile browser and delete the messages using that.
Can I delete all mail using Simple HTML Gmail?
No.
Basic HTML Gmail lacked a straightforward way to mass-delete emails.
(How to delete all email messages tested with Gmail in a desktop browser; first published September 2018, last updated November 2024)