10 Hacks Every Gmail User Should Know

I’ve been using my main Gmail account for about 20 years now and I’m pretty proud of how I’ve maintained it. My inbox isn’t overflowing with unread emails, my storage has never been full, and I’ve set up hundreds of filters to send unnecessary emails straight to the trash. I don’t use any third-party tools to tame this chaos and I’m here to share all the hacks I’ve implemented to keep my Gmail inbox under control.

Manage email subscriptions to tame your inbox chaos

You should start emptying your inbox by reviewing all of your email newsletter subscriptions. In the past, I was guilty of subscribing to way too many newsletters and cluttering my inbox. What started out as a great way to read interesting things has become another chore that I just can’t seem to keep up with. At some point, you have to let go of those unread newsletters. You can start by manually unsubscribing from newsletters that you are not going to read. You can also move these subscriptions to another email address, so you can maintain a reading-only inbox.

You can also try using read-later apps to receive and read your newsletters. I use Readwise Reader these days, and it’s allowed me to read a lot more than when those emails were arriving in my inbox. If your problem is that you’re subscribed to too many promotional emails that are essentially junk, you might also consider using Gmail’s built-in tools to unsubscribe from promotional mailing lists.

Use as many filters as possible

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Gmail has powerful filters that can automatically delete unwanted emails. Yes, you can select a group of emails and click the Report Spam button to get rid of them. This moves these emails to spam, but I’ve sometimes seen recurring emails from the same sender end up in my inbox even after doing this. So I started using Gmail’s filters to ban repeat spammers to the trash. You can do this by selecting a set of spam emails from different senders that you don’t want to hear from again, then clicking the three-dot button in Gmail’s web view. Then choose Filter messages like theseand Gmail will automatically populate the filter list with all these senders. Select Researchand in the next pop-up window check delete itAnd Also apply a filter to matching conversations. Finally, select Create a filter.

This will automatically move all emails from these senders to the Trash and prevent more of their emails from ending up in your inbox.

Search filters are your best friend

When your inbox is already full, or almost full, you should try a few search filters to spot the emails taking up the most space in your inbox. The most useful is the “Size” filter. For example, in the Gmail search bar, you can type Size:20mand the results will focus on emails larger than 20MB. Change the number to 15, 10, or any other number and it will show you emails larger than that size. You can save these emails if they contain anything useful, and if not, you can delete them all.

Use advanced search to find spam

I’m pretty embarrassed to admit that when I was younger, I sent way too many messages to all my friends and family members. My inbox still contains forwards from that time, a number of which I also sent to over 50 people in one go. I may have been responsible for a lot of spam, but it’s never too late to atone for your sins. If you click the three-line icon to the right of the search bar in Gmail, you’ll see the service’s advanced search options. You can use these options to search for emails from specific date ranges and get rid of old clutter that is no longer useful (once you’re done grinding your teeth, of course). Alternatively, you can simply use a search filter to find these emails. Try something like after: 1/1/2006 before: 2/1/2007 to locate all your emails sent in 2006.

Using advanced search tools is simpler than filters because they do not require memorizing various search operators. It also makes more of these search tools accessible, making it a great way to remove old emails from your inbox. If only I could delete them from other people’s inboxes too.

Attack unnecessary emails at the source

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At some point, it gets tiring to keep adding filters to your Gmail to keep unnecessary emails away. I highly recommend looking at different websites’ settings menus to stop spam at the source. Social media sites like Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn are some of the most popular email senders that no one asked for. If you browse their communication preferences pages, you will be able to stop many of their emails before they arrive in your inbox. I make it a point to uncheck all emails from every site I sign up for. Once you’ve done that, these sites may still find a way to send you more emails, but you can click the unsubscribe button (usually found next to the spam emails in the window). Social Or Promotions tabs) to stop them quite easily, or just use Gmail’s filters to prevent these emails from reaching your eyes.

Teach Gmail which of your emails are important

Gmail can help you sort through unwanted emails from your inbox. Next to each email in your inbox, you will see a small right arrow icon. When you see an important email, you can click the arrow icon, which will turn yellow. This marks the email as important, and over time Gmail will keep these emails in your inbox and send the rest to other folders.

Delete emails in Spam and Trash folders

Gmail is pretty good at automatically blocking spam, which means a lot of unwanted emails will end up in your account. Spam case. Likewise, if you followed the steps outlined above, you will have a bunch of emails in your Garbage can case. This is helpful, but you won’t see any real change in your Gmail storage until you clear all those emails. To do this, manually navigate to these folders, select all the emails you want to get rid of and delete them all. Remember to check if you delete important emails, as emails deleted from these folders cannot be recovered.

Also, be sure to check these folders at least once a month, as Google will automatically delete any messages that have been there for more than 30 days.

Quickly clean Gmail space

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Gmail offers a simple, built-in way to identify what’s taking up the most space in your inbox. To get started, visit the storage cleanup page and click Clean the space. It will show you some suggestions and provide easy ways to declutter your Gmail. Just follow the on-screen steps to make it.

Turn important emails into tasks

My colleague David Nield’s advice on turning emails into tasks helped me a lot. When you open an email, you can click the Add to tasks at the top, which adds it to Google Tasks and turns this email into a to-do item. This helps me keep track of emails that would otherwise be lost. This way I can easily save the most important emails and delete the rest. A lot of Gmail cleaning revolves around actively managing emails, and this tip just helps me quickly get rid of unnecessary emails on a daily basis.

Try using third-party email management services

Normally, I’m reluctant to recommend third-party services for handling email chaos. This is because using them means you have to give the companies that give them access to your inbox, which is a privacy and security nightmare. However, I once used SaneBox to help a friend reduce his inbox from 50,000 unreads to around 10,000 in one day, while putting in place ways to prevent his inbox from becoming overloaded again. It has been reviewed by Google and Leviathan Security Group, which means I can confidently recommend at least this service. Lifehacker’s sister site PCMag also gave Sanebox a glowing review.

You can try the service for free using the 14-day trial. Meanwhile, you can use its deep email cleaning feature to quickly get rid of a number of your unwanted emails.