How to free up space on Gmail

Important conversations, spam, promotions, work emails: there is really everything inside your Gmail inbox , so much so that space has started to run out and cause some problems. The idea of ​​deleting emails one by one and, consequently, having to choose which ones to delete, however, does not excite you and you would like to find some faster method to do cleaning.

That’s how things are, right? Then don’t worry, this is a common problem. The space on Gmail, at first, may seem like a lot but reaching its limit is not that difficult, especially if you use the free plan offered by the service. Solving the problem, however, is just as simple.

In fact, in today’s tutorial I will show you how to free up space on Gmail in a few steps, effortlessly and above all quickly. In this regard, you should know that there are several methods to achieve this, all of which are illustrated in the next lines. How do you say? Do you want to get to work right away? So stop the chatter and roll up our sleeves, there is an email box to clean!

Index

• Preliminary information
• How to free up space on Gmail
  • Deleted items
  • Big items
  • Other elements
• How to free up space on Gmail for Android

Preliminary information

Gmail , as you know, is a great email service that works directly from the browser and allows you to store your emails up to a maximum of 15 GB . This storage space belongs to Google One , Google ‘s cloud storage service that you can use to store, share and synchronize your data.

To make you better understand what we are talking about, Google One is what you use for your documents on Google Drive , to save / synchronize data from Android apps (e.g. WhatsApp backups ), to save photos / videos on Google Photos (in case you have decided to archive files in original quality; archiving in compressed format does not erode Google Drive space) and more.

The emails, photos and documents stored in Gmail therefore converge within the 15 GB made available by the free plan of Google One, ensuring that the space runs out before its due. If there aren’t that many messages in your Gmail inbox, the problem could lie in another of the services or apps you use with Google One.

In case you do not want to delete the various files that populate your space on Google One, you can simply decide to buy a larger storage plan, such as Google One 100 GB (1.99 euros per month or 19.99 euros per month. year), Google One 200 GB (€ 2.99 per month or € 29.99 per year) or Google One 2 TB (€ 9.99 per month or € 99.99 per year). Otherwise, to solve your space problems without putting your hand to your wallet, you can follow the advice I am about to give you.

How to free up space on Gmail

After the necessary initial premises, the time has come to proceed with the actual cleaning of the space on Gmail. To do this, you can act directly from your email box (using strings of code to be inserted in the search bar, or folders) or you can act from Google One .

By acting directly from Gmail, you can perform searches filtered by date , size of attachments or other factors. By acting from Google One, however, it is possible to manage the entire storage space of Gmail, Google Drive, Google Photos etc. Whatever method you decide to use, you will find everything explained in detail in the next paragraphs.

Deleted items

The first step that I recommend you take to make room in the Gmail box is to go and act on all those items that have been moved to the Trash but are not yet deleted. To do this, you can use several methods.

The first, and the simplest, is to access your mailbox, scroll through the categories in the left menu and manually remove the emails in the Spam and Trash folders , pressing on the items Delete all spam messages now / Empty the Trash now .

Alternatively, to also check the deleted files present in Google One and to have a more complete cleaning of the storage space, connect to the main page of Google One and, if necessary, log in to your account: to do this, press the Login button , select your account from those in the list, enter the Password in the space provided and finally press the Next button .

At this point, click on the Space icon (the one marked by a cloud, in the menu on the left). If, on the other hand, your Google account is already connected, click directly on the aforementioned icon. In the new page that has opened, then look for the box called Take back your space and press the link Free up space for your account . By doing so, you will be redirected to a new page, within the Storage Management panel , through which you can fully manage your storage space.

Scrolling down the page, in fact, you will find the Deleted Items section and, again below, the list of all the items deleted by the various Google services. At this point, click on the item Review and free [amount of space] relating to the service in which you want to clean, select them one by one or click on the Delete all item , to delete them in bulk.

Please note, however, that once this is done you will not be able to recover them from the Recycle Bin, as it is a permanent deletion.

Big items

Even emails containing large attachments burden on available storage space. In fact, a good way to clean your Gmail mailbox is to delete these messages (if they are no longer needed, of course). Doing so is quite simple and, even in this case, it is possible to act both directly from the mailbox and from Google One.

In the first case, log in to Gmail and, in the search bar at the top, type the words has: attachment . This will filter and display all emails that contain an attachment.

With the quick keys , located below the search bar, you can also filter your emails in an even more targeted way, deciding to view those that contain a PDF , a Document , an Image , a Presentation as an attachment or use as filter date or sender.

Another function is the Advanced Search , which you can find after the quick access keys, as a last option: once you have clicked on the homonymous item, a box will open in which you can enter, for example, keywords to search within. emails.

To further speed up the operation, you can use the larger: 1M strings , to search for emails with attachments larger than 1 MB (you can also insert other sizes, of course) or before: 2020/01/01 , to find all the emails prior to the date indicated. Once you have identified the messages to be deleted, select them (by checking the relevant boxes) and press the Trash icon , to move them to the Trash (which you will then need to empty, as seen above)

If you prefer to act from Google One , access the main page of the service , go to the Storage Management panel and scroll down the page to the item Large Items . Below, you will find, broken down by service, all the large items that can be deleted to save space.

Then click on the item Review and free up [amount of space] and proceed with the removal of Large Attachments in Gmail, Large Files in Google Drive and Large Photos and Videos in Google Photos. Easy, right?

Other elements

There are additional items that can be deleted from Gmail that often escape routine cleaning tasks. For example, you can check the Categories section of your Gmail box (accessible via the menu on the left) and analyze the Social , Updates , Forums and Promotions categories to find out if there are unwanted emails in them to delete.

To delete the messages in question, click on the name of the category to be cleaned, check the boxes of all the emails you want to delete and click on the Delete button (the trash can). Alternatively, click the Select icon (the square) and choose, from the menu that has opened, the item All , then click on the item Select all [number] conversations present in [Category] , to delete all the emails present.

The last element that takes up space is the unsupported videos on Google Photos. In a nutshell, these are videos that the storage system cannot play: to delete them, you can go to Google One and, at the bottom of the page relating to the Storage Management panel , look for the item Other elements . Press, therefore, on the item Review and free [amount of space] and proceed with the removal of the videos that cannot be viewed.

How to free up space on Gmail for Android

Are you using an Android device with integrated Google services and are you wondering how to free up space on Gmail ? Well, you can follow all the tips I gave you above, but in addition you can also free up space on the device memory by clearing the Gmail app cache .

In practice, it is the elimination of a set of temporary files that take up memory space and are used to speed up access to certain information. To proceed with deleting the Gmail cache files, take your smartphone (or tablet) and tap the Settings icon on the Home screen or in the drawer of the device.

Then, press on the App item (if necessary, twice in a row) and, in the new screen that has opened, press the Gmail icon . At this point, tap on the Memory option and, in the new screen that opened, press the Clear cache button .

In this way, the cache will be deleted and space on the memory of your smartphone or tablet will be recovered.