Mastering Zero Inbox: 6 Ways to Delete All Emails on Gmail

Tools to delete emails have proven a boon to employees and businesses as they increase productivity by reducing time spent on clearing an overflowing inbox.

Did you know multiple surveys have reported that an average employee spends 28% on emails each day?

Checking and working on emails can be overwhelming if we have yet to organize or manage our emails. In this article, we will discuss ways to attain zero inboxes and work with emails efficiently. Here’s a table featuring some must have tools you need to add to your email arsenal for a clear and fresh inbox!

Clear Inbox = Better Productivity

Email management is efficient in maximizing effectiveness at the workplace. The continued demand for remote work has increased the use of Gmail, as it is considered a professional source of communication as compared to other platforms.

Therefore, it becomes necessary to organize emails in the best possible way that will help streamline the workflow. It is the best method of communication, which should be managed daily or at a fixed time as it contains important organizational documents.

#1. Time Efficiency

Better email management increases time efficiency, allowing us to focus on primary work instead of other emails. Usually, many emails distract us from the target task of going to Gmail, which takes more time, even for small tasks. Gmail management makes it easier for us to find important emails and reduces the time spent searching. Therefore, the potential result of important emails is found quicker than before.

Also read: Ways to Automate Gmail Tasks to Boost Efficiency

#2. More Profits

Time efficiency affects the business’s profitability and reduces the amount spent on labor. From organizing hundreds of emails per day to regularly backing up and sorting important emails, this adds up to business costs. Email management has made handling and sorting necessary emails. This is a low-cost solution for prioritizing important tasks.

#3. Increase Productivity

When software easily performs a time-consuming task, it allows businessmen to focus on other tasks. This allows hassle to work more easily, helping to enhance other productive flows. Better management prevents distractions by blocking unnecessary pop-up notifications. Therefore, it can be helpful to concentrate on ongoing work without interruption.

#4. Work-Life Balance

Email management’s benefits come together to reward businesses through better work-life balance. Time savings, benefits, and productivity at work help us live a healthy, mindful life after work. Personal email management separates personal and professional emails, reducing the unnecessary work burden at home.

What is Zero Inbox and its Benefits?

Zero Inbox is an approach to email management that aims to keep Gmail empty almost all the time. The strategy was developed by productivity expert Merlin Mann, who explains how confusing the inbox with to-do lists can impact productivity.

For businesses or employees, emails are filled with thousands of emails that distract from important work and can confuse them throughout the day. Merlin Mann presented five concepts to deal with this problem:

• Some emails are more important than others: Not every email needs to be treated the same way. Only a few important emails must be responded to, and the rest should be deleted. This concept proves to be a time saver, but it is important to separate it out while keeping in mind what is important and might be needed in the future.
• Time is priceless: Zero inbox is a useful way to save time for a productive day. An individual has to deal with how many emails they can handle in a day; this also helps track the work progress daily. The concept ensures that only important and worthy work requires first attention and protects our time.
• Less can be more: The concept of inbox zero proves that fewer words are enough to convey meaning in an email reply. Long essays are unnecessary, and we do not need to feel obligated when writing.
• Freedom from Guilt: Too many emails can be overwhelming, but living in guilt is not the solution. According to Mann, leave the guilt behind, focus on cleaning up the mess, and try to resolve the important issues first.
• Lying to ourself doesn’t empty the inbox: First of all, we have to be honest with ourselves, accept the situation that is going on, and try to deal with it. Thousands of emails must be responded to in a limited time, but avoiding them will keep piling the emails that are no longer useful.

Also read: Best Email Archiving Software to Store for Future Audits/Retrievals

The Benefits

Email management and the zero inbox concept save time and have been proven to work for businesses. Zero email is considered beneficial as it allows us to focus on important tasks without interruption.

• The Zero Inbox method saves time mainly because it teaches us how to handle emails at that time. When we clearly understand what we need to deal with, we are more likely to respond to the necessary tasks without distraction.
• This improves stakeholder communication, as zero inbox allows for immediate responses to incoming emails. The respondents get the benefit instead of waiting for hours.
• Zero inbox concepts prevent important tasks from being missed as the empty inbox shows newly received emails first. Emails that deserve attention get priority and improve business productivity.

Why Clean Gmail Inbox

Clearing the inbox is an ideal way to boost productivity. There are a lot of messages in a person’s Gmail in a single day, including malware, junk, spam, and even promotions. These unwanted files need to be removed as they disrupt the main function or consume the space of Gmail. An organized inbox is key to a productive day with a focus on to-do lists.

• Find important emails easily: An organized gmail is essential to keep important emails safe. This is important when following up so that we can easily find the emails we need. Unwanted or spam emails strain productivity in a busy business schedule. When we regularly clear the inbox, we can tackle important tasks without interruptions.
• To free up storage: Google offers 15GB of free storage shared across Drive, Photos, and other Google apps. Fully filled storage causes lag and stop receiving emails. Therefore, it is necessary to clear the storage from time to time to keep the inbox healthy and maintain an efficient flow of emails.
• To clear junk files: Gmail has Spam folders that automatically store unwanted emails in the inbox. Google automatically deletes it within 30 days, but some emails are malicious and have commercial purposes that try to connect with us. Clearing and blocking those emails is necessary, as the sender might try to connect through other emails. It is highly recommended that we unsubscribe or clear junk emails to avoid any distraction or harm.
• Stay focused: A systematic order prevents the mind from wandering. When we start our day, a flood of emails creates pressure and makes us lost as to where to start; the systematic structure of emails gives us the idea to take action.

Thus, a clear inbox is a straightforward way to start the day productively.

How to Clean Gmail Inbox

There are ways to delete the emails as they have to be filtered in terms of category, size, sender, read or unread. Here are some steps to delete the emails in bulk:

#1. Delete in Bulk

Deletion is an easy way to clear our Gmail inbox quickly, primarily to solve the full storage problem. Google allows the removal of many unwanted emails that consume storage, such as spam, promotions, and others. This reduces the burden of deleting mail individually, which takes time.

Steps to delete emails in bulk:

• Login to Gmail on a mobile, PC, or laptop.
• Click the box just to the left of the Refresh button.

• Clicking the box will select all the emails.

• Click the Delete button, which appears as a trash button in the row.
• It also allows us to hide emails we do not want to delete but access them whenever possible. The Archive button enables this feature, located right on the side of the box.

And voila! A major chunk of your inbox is now clear!

#2. Delete by Category

Google has categorized email based on its use, i.e., social, update, primary, or promotional. It allows the deletion of specific categories of messages, making it possible to clear a particular category of emails and save others.

Steps to delete emails in categories:

• Click on the drop-down menu on the left; the list shown has a Category section at the bottom.
• Select the specific one we want to delete, such as Social, Updates, Forums, or Promotions.

• Check the box as normal at the top left.
• Click the blue text to select all emails.
• Click on Delete or Archive as we wish.

Thus, you can quickly clear updates, spam emails and promotions without having to waste time manually checking them off.

#3. Deleting by Time Period 

Google allows the deletion of emails based on specific dates, thus reducing the burden of scrolling. We can view emails before or after their preferred date and delete old unwanted emails or new emails that have no use in the future.

Steps to delete in bulk:

• In Gmail’s search panel, type before:YYYY/MM/DD to select the mail before a specific date.
• Type after:YYYY/MM/DD in the search box and press enter to get the mail after a certain date.

• The emails displayed on the screen belong to the selected time range.
• Check the box again and click to select all conversations.
• Click on Delete or Archive.

This works well for old emails that are redundant and just taking up space.

#4. Deleting from a Particular Sender

Gmail makes it easy to delete emails from an individual sender, making it helpful to clear data from a particular address. We can use this feature when their inbox is overflowing from just one person, such as email marketers.

Steps to delete emails from a particular sender:

• To delete the email from an individual sender, Type from:[email protected]

• Check out the box on the left side if we want to delete all emails, or we can select the read-on unread messages specifically.
• Click on delete or archive

Phew! Who thought a clean inbox could be so satisfying, right?

#5. Deleting Read/Unread

Deleting read or unread messages is a good way to clean up emails occasionally. This means we can delete all their read messages or clear their inbox without looking at them.

Steps to delete read or unread emails:

• To delete the read or unread messages from email, Type is: read or is: unread respectively. 

• Hit enter and check the box on the left side.
• Follow the steps of bulk deleting, check the box, and select all conversations.
• Further, we can choose the option between deleting or archive

This is great for those pesky subscription emails that you just don’t want to bother opening!

#6. Deleting by Size

Deleting emails by size is the best way to free up Gmail’s limited storage. Some emails contain attachments or large files that consume unnecessary storage, even if they are useless. Google allows the deletion of emails based on their size, thus relieving the platform of storage.

Steps to delete emails based on their size:

• Click Settings on the right side of the search bar.
• This will display the option to select the size for the attachment.

• Type the size, and select greater than or less than.
• Select the email and click Delete.

Thus, you can quickly clear up space by getting rid of emails that are eating up the most storage.

Here are a few tools that, I think, are very helpful to help us clean and manage emails efficiently:

SaneBox

SaneBox is an email management software with an automated email assistant. The tool removes unwanted email from the inbox and puts it into a specific folder, saving management time. 

Key Feature

• The tool removes unwanted email from the inbox and puts it into a specific folder.
• It has a SaneBlackHole folder, which allows us to put a specific sender on it, and we will not receive any mail from that sender.
• SaneBox allows the creation of folders for receipts or families, reducing Gmail’s complexity.
• It provides a SaneAttachment folder that stores all email attachments in the cloud to free up storage.
• We can schedule a break from email by modifying its “Do Not Disturb feature,” or we can snooze an email to focus on our work.

It’s smart and trained AI that speeds up emails and allows us to focus on our core work.

Clean Email

Clean Email is an organized email assistant that efficiently manages overloaded, unwanted, and unread emails. It is a privacy-focused software that takes complete control over our emails. It filters and groups email segments, helping identify important and spam mail.

Key Features

• This software allows us to stop unwanted emails, including unsubscribing from newsletters.
• It has a screening feature that blocks mail from unwanted and new senders.
• Clean Email enables easy deletion of large numbers of emails and recommends cleanup suggestions based on our habits.
• The software allows the creation of a custom rule for emails, helping to maintain with minimal effort. This means users can set up to archive or automatically read social emails daily.

Email Assistant handles large numbers of emails easily, providing the best privacy for us.

Superhuman

Superhuman is an AI-powered management software that helps us manage emails on Gmail and Outlook easily. The software has built-in snippets that help compose emails faster, writing the most appropriate phrases, paragraphs, or entire cold emails if required.

Key Features

• It allows setting reminders for sent emails, helping manage important work without delegation.
• It allows snoozing emails for a specific time period, helps to leave a burden aside, and focuses on other work as needed.
• We can see the status of their email when the recipient receives or reads it. It also allows the sharing of status among the team to improve efficiency.
• AI enables auto-correction for writing, supporting extra characters, missing characters, transposed characters, missing punctuation, and incorrect capitalization.

AI-enabled software enhances email writing capabilities, thereby saving time. It also reminds us about emails, so the user can complete important tasks.

Mailstrom

Mailstrom is an email management software that Google, Yahoo, and Outlook support. This system is designed for businesses of all types and sizes to help send, delete, or archive in bulk with a single click.

Key Features

• This tool is powered by human intelligence that easily identifies and groups thousands of emails.
• It protects the inbox from spam, allowing blocking of unwanted senders or subjects.
• It uses industry-leading IMAP via OAuth2 encryption, meaning the software never gets the user’s password.
• The software allows unsubscribing from the newsletter without visiting a particular website.

Mailstrom Software’s human intelligence sets it apart from others, as it treats emails from a human perspective.

Final words

Cleaning Gmail is an important task for every businessman, professional, and individual. Our inbox is often filled with important messages and tasks, but handling email clutter and junk is also part of the job.

An organized inbox keeps the mind happy at the start of the day and positively impacts productivity. When the inbox is filled with too many emails, we need clarification about what to do or how to do it.

Therefore, emails should be clear and free of unnecessary files and messages to ensure the best results. Various software available on the internet provides service for the best optimization of Gmail.

Some use AI to give the best results, but among all these, security is the biggest concern among us. Gmail contains emails we do not want to share, so the software was chosen after analyzing its security.

Not using Gmail? Here, are some mail cleanup apps that work on Yahoo and Outlook too!