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How to delete all emails from a sender in Gmail
The daily deal site, the social network, the shop you bought from once in 2017: a handful of senders often make up a large share of a mailbox. Deleting them one screen at a time is hopeless. Here's how to clear every message from a sender or mailing list in one pass, and keep them from coming back.
The quick way (on a computer)
- Search for the sender. Type
from:news@example.comin the Gmail search box. You can also use just the domain:from:example.com. - Select everything. Tick the Select all checkbox above the list, then click "Select all conversations that match this search". Without that second click, only the first page is selected.
- Delete. Everything moves to Trash.
- Empty Trash if you need the space now. Otherwise Gmail removes it permanently after 30 days.
The Gmail app can't select every conversation that matches a search, so you'd be ticking messages one by one. Bulk deletion is a desktop job.
When one newsletter uses many addresses: list:
Marketing mail often rotates senders: news@, offers@, noreply@, a
different subdomain every campaign. A from: search misses some of them. What stays constant is the
mailing-list ID in the message's List-Id header, and Gmail can search it directly.
- Open one of the newsletters, click ⋮ → Show original, and find the
List-Id:line. - Search
list:followed by that ID, for examplelist:promo.example.com. - Select all matching conversations and delete, as above.
Several senders in one pass
Combine senders with OR inside parentheses, then delete the whole result at once:
from:(deals@shop.example OR alerts@social.example OR news@daily.example)
Useful variations
| Search | Deletes |
|---|---|
from:example.com older_than:1y | Everything from that sender older than a year: keeps the recent ones |
from:example.com larger:1M | Only the heavy messages from that sender |
from:example.com -is:starred | Everything except the messages you starred |
from:example.com has:attachment | Only messages carrying attachments |
category:promotions older_than:6m | Every promotion older than six months, any sender |
Stop them coming back
- Unsubscribe. Gmail shows an Unsubscribe link next to the sender name on most newsletters, and recent versions of Gmail also group your subscriptions on a Manage subscriptions page.
- Or filter them out. Run your
from:orlist:search, open the search options (the sliders icon), click Create filter, choose Delete it, and tick "Also apply filter to matching conversations" to clear the backlog in the same step.
Which senders are worth deleting?
All of the above assumes you know who to target, and Gmail never tells you which senders take the most space. Message count is misleading: 3,000 plain-text alerts can weigh less than 40 emails full of photos.
MailBalance ranks every sender, and every mailing list by its
List-Id, by total size. Tick several rows, and it opens a single Gmail search with
all of them joined by OR, ready for "Select all" and Delete. It never deletes anything itself: you stay
in Gmail, in control.
See your heaviest senders and lists
Ranked by storage, not message count. Tick the ones to clear, and MailBalance opens the Gmail search for you.
Questions
How do I delete all emails from one sender in Gmail?
Search from:sender@example.com, tick Select all, click "Select all conversations that match this search", then Delete. Empty Trash to free the space right away.
Can I do it in the Gmail app?
Not in one go: the app can't select every match of a search. Use Gmail on a computer.
Does deleting a sender's emails free storage immediately?
Only after they leave Trash. Empty Trash, and the storage figure updates shortly after.
Will deleting affect emails I sent to that person?
It can. In Gmail's default conversation view, deleting a conversation deletes the whole thread, your own replies included. That doesn't matter for newsletters. For a real person, star the threads you want to keep and add -is:starred to the search.