Delete all unread emails in Gmail [Without third-party apps]

From the thousands of emails you have received, you would have probably read all the important emails leaving all the unimportant and trivial ones unread. Well, that is quite normal for Gmail users. To clean up your Gmail inbox, you can delete all the unread emails.

In this article, we will clear all your queries regarding the bulk deletion of unread emails in Gmail.

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Bulk action for either deletion or anything else shall be done carefully because it can cause data loss and emails might go missing.

Can I delete all of my unread emails at once?

Of course you can. On top of that, you can perform any bulk action such as moving to another folder, marking as read, etc. on your unread emails.

You can select multiple unread emails at once to perform an action. But, selecting emails one by one is too time-consuming. Even if you select all the emails on a page (Maximum 100) at once, it would still be time-consuming if you have thousands of emails.

Further in this article, we will tell you how you can select all unread emails in one go.

How to delete all unread emails in Gmail?

You can delete all unread emails in Gmail at once on a desktop or laptop.

Follow these steps:

1. Firstly go to Gmail and log in to your account.
   
   
2. Then type in:unread in the search box and press Enter.
   
   
   
3. Subsequently click on the empty checkbox on top of the emails as shown in the below image to mark it.
   
   
   
4. If there are more than 50 emails unread, a message will appear at the top. Click Select all conversations that match this search.
   
   
   
5. Once all the emails are selected, click on the Delete button shown as trash icon in the actions bar.
   
   
   
6. Finally click Ok in the confirmation menu to delete all the marked emails.
   
   

How to delete all unread emails in Gmail on phone?

Sadly, you cannot select multiple emails with one tap in the Gmail app for mobile. Neither iOS nor Android app for Gmail has an option to select all emails at once in any category, be it primary, social, promotions, etc.

However, you can do so from the internet browser on your mobile.

Firstly, you must enable the desktop mode or desktop site on the internet browser. After that, follow the same steps we have discussed above.

How to delete unread emails older than 30 days?

Selecting all the emails and then un-marking the new ones is a little bothersome. You can search emails in a specific time frame, then select and delete all of them.

Use the following steps to delete old unread emails:

1. Go to Gmail and log in to your account.
   
   
2. Then type is:unread Older_Than:1m (type any number followed by ‘m’, ‘d’, or ‘y’ for the number of days, months, or years respectively) in the search box and press Enter.
   
   
   
3. Subsequently click to mark the empty checkbox at the top as shown in the below image.
   
   
   
4. If there are more than 50 emails in search results, a message will appear at the top. Click Select all conversations that match this search.
   
   
   
5. Then click on the Delete button shown as trash icon in the actions ribbon.
   
   
   
6. Finally click Ok in the confirmation menu for deleting all the old unread emails.
   
   

Additional Information

You can also search and delete unread emails older than a particular date by searching is:unread before:YYYY/MM/DD in the search box.

Where, YYYY stands for year in four digits, MM for month in two digits, and DD for date in two digits.

Conclusion

Deleting all unread emails can free up your inbox. However, wrong selection of emails can cause you to lose important emails.

Through this article, you can delete only the unread emails in Gmail easily.

Using a similar method, you can also mark all emails as read in Gmail.

FAQs