How to delete all promotions in Gmail

Had your Gmail account for a while? You’ve probably got thousands and thousands of emails, a lot of them spam of one kind or another. Most true spam (all those Nigerian princes writing to you with opportunities of a lifetime) goes to the spam folder, but the kind of spam you signed up for ends up in the Promotions tab.

This is where all those newsletters from random online stores go, as well as new product emails, sale announcements, and other e-commerce debris. It’s unlikely that you need any of this, so deleting it is a great way to free up space in your Gmail account. The big-brained move is then stopping as much of it as possible from coming back.

Adam Cholinski

How to delete all promotions in Gmail, in short:

1. Open a web browser on your computer.
2. Log in to your Gmail account at https://mail.google.com.
3. Click on the promotions tab in the main part of the screen.
4. In the top-left corner of this part of the screen (above the primary tab), click on the “select” icon (a square with a tick in it).
5. All the emails on the screen will be selected, a message will appear in the top-center part of your inbox beginning with: “all xx conversations on this page are selected.”
6. Click on “select all x,xxx conversations in promotions.”
7. Click on the “delete” icon (in the shape of a trash can) to get rid of everything in your Promotions tab.

Clearing your Gmail promotions tab using a web browser

The easiest way to delete all your Gmail promotional emails is to do so using a regular web browser on a computer rather than a Gmail mobile app on a phone. Here’s how to delete all promotions in Gmail using a web browser:

1. Log in to your Gmail account at https://mail.google.com.
2. Click on the promotions tab towards the top of the main panel (just above your emails).
3. Click on the “select” icon (a square with a tick in it), it’s below the magnifying glass icon and above the primary tab.
4. This will select all the emails on the first page of your promotions tab. A message will appear in the top-center of the panel, beginning with: “all xx conversations on this page are selected.”
5. Click on the second part of the message, it’s hyperlinked and includes the words: “select all x,xxx conversations in promotions.”
6. Click on the “delete” icon (in the shape of a trash can) to clear out your entire promotions folder.

Doing this will move all your promotional emails to the Trash folder. You can then empty this folder, but know that it may not be possible to permanently delete emails from Google’s data centers: there’s no telling how long Google keeps your emails and other data or what it uses them for.

Clearing your Gmail promotions tab on Android and iOS

You can also delete promotions from your Gmail inbox by using the Gmail app on a mobile device. Unfortunately, there’s no way to mass delete all your promotional emails in one go on either Android or iOS. You’ll have to select each email individually and delete multiple emails in batches.

Here’s how to delete all promotions in Gmail using your phone:

1. Open the Gmail app.
2. Tap on the hamburger menu (an icon with three horizontal lines) in the top-left corner of the screen.
3. Tap on “promotions.”
4. Long-press on the first email you want to delete until it’s highlighted.
5. Tap on any other emails you want to delete, they’ll be added to your selection.
6. Once you’re done selecting emails for deletion, tap the trash bin icon to delete them.

Again, the messages you delete will end up in your trash folder, from where they’ll be auto-deleted in 30 days. You can empty the trash folder sooner than that if you need to free up space, for example.

Recovering deleted emails in Gmail

Mass-deleting emails is undoubtedly more convenient than going through hundreds if not thousands of promotional emails by hand. It’s also riskier: You could easily end up deleting important messages that have ended up among all those unwanted emails. Luckily, there’s a way to recover deleted emails in Gmail.

By following the instructions above, you’re not really deleting all those promotional emails from your Gmail inbox—you’re just sending them to your trash folder, from which Google will auto delete them in 30 days. This means you can fish accidentally deleted emails out of your trash folder.

To “permanently delete” promotional emails, empty trash once you’re done deleting promotional emails. To do this:

1. Click or tap on “more” in the menu on the left-hand side of your Gmail inbox.
2. Click or tap on “trash” or “bin.”
3. Click or tap on “empty trash now” towards the top-center of the main panel.

There’s no telling if Google will actually delete your emails, but they will disappear from your inbox and you’ll permanently lose access to them. You can also archive emails—this’ll keep them from cluttering up your inbox without taking away your ability to access them later.

How to reduce the number of new emails that end up in the promotions category

Mass deletion is a great (really, the only) way to clear your Gmail inbox of spam and clutter. The problem is that it does nothing to stem the tide of incoming emails, leaving you with more clearing-out to do down the line. Deleting all the promotional emails you’ve already received is only the beginning.

To stop future emails from filling your inbox categories, especially your promotions category, you’ll need to take a two-fold approach. First, put a stop to all the marketing emails and newsletters you signed up for. Each one should have an unsubscribe button or link at the bottom. Clicking on these should remove you from those mailing lists, but be sure to only unsubscribe from emails from sources you recognize. Malicious emails will often redirect “unsubscribe” links to phishing websites and malware downloads.

Both the Gmail app and desktop versions of Gmail also allow you to block a certain sender and report emails as spam (which automatically also blocks those senders). Gmail also provides its own unsubscribe link to make the process of unsubscribing both safer and easier.

Second, attack the problem at its source. Doing all of the above—mass-deleting emails, unsubscribing where possible, and blocking senders—should stop all the companies that are targeting you now. To stop new spammers from attacking your inbox in the future, you need to stop them from getting your email address in the first place.

Spammers, scammers, and even legitimate marketers will often get your contact information and other personal data from companies called data brokers. You can compel these companies to delete your data and remove you from their data-harvesting operations simply by submitting opt-out requests to them.

You can do this yourself by following our free guides, or you can get Incogni to do it for you. An automated personal information removal service like Incogni can find, send removal requests to, and follow-up with dozens of data brokers at a time. Incogni will then repeat each opt out process for as long as you’re subscribed, to keep these companies from re-adding you later.

Check out these related spam-stopping guides:

• How to stop spam emails on iPhone
• How to delete multiple emails in Gmail on phone
• How to delete all promotions in Gmail
• How to stop getting emails from Reddit
• How to clear your Gmail inbox

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