5 tricks to clean up your Gmail and save space

  • Cleaning up Gmail improves your productivity by making it easier to access important emails.
  • An organized inbox enables more effective communication and prevents critical messages from being missed.
  • Keeping your account free of spam and old emails increases personal security and protects sensitive information.
  • Gmail offers tools to manage space, avoiding storage overflow.

Gmail app logo to clean gmail

Clean Gmail This is something that all of us who have an email account with Google should do, because this way we would avoid the problems caused by lack of space. However, it is something that we tend to be quite lazy about and that we leave for when we have no other choice.

If you're tired of digital clutter and want to keep your email account as clean and tidy as possible, here are some tricks that will help you leave everything in perfect order.

Why spend time reorganizing our email account?

Options to clean Gmail from your computer

Well, because it turns out that this helps improve your productivity, security and even improves your communication skills, as we will see below.

Productivity improvement

If you would like to be more productive, start by reorganizing your emails. Because a well-organized inbox allows you to quickly find the most relevant messages, and saves you time searching through emails that have no value.

By using tools such as labels or folders, you can improve your task management and always keep in mind those tasks that are a priority.

Optimizing communication

An organized inbox improves your communications because it allows you to keep track of which messages require an urgent response. Plus, if everything is in its place, you are less likely to miss an important message.

Security enhancement

If you keep your account free of spam and emails that you don't care about, you are investing in your security, because you are going to delete everything that could be suspicious or potentially dangerous.

Additionally, by regularly deleting old emails containing sensitive information, you also reduce the risk of this information ending up in the wrong hands if your account is hacked.

Saving space

The free Gmail account includes 15 GB of shared storage between Gmail, Drive and Google PhotosAlthough it may seem like a lot, this space can be used up faster than you imagine, so it's a good idea to clean up from time to time and make room for the things that are truly important.

There's no point in having thousands of worthless emails piled up when you could use that free space to store your work or class documents in Drive.

How can we clean Gmail?

Phone with Gmail logo with Google logo behind it

Now that we know how beneficial it can be to have a clean and tidy email account, let's see how we can achieve it.

1. Delete large and old emails

We are going to start by deleting the information that is no longer of any use to us, as well as the emails that are too heavy.

Open your email account and in the search bar type “size:10mb”, this will show us those messages that occupy more than 10 MB. If you also want to apply a temporary search criterion, use these commands:

  • older_tan:1y
  • older_tan:6m

This way you can locate large emails that you received more than a year or more than six months ago. Then, you just have to select those that you no longer need and delete them directly. If any of those emails contain an attachment that you might need, download it and save it to Drive, then you can delete the message.

2. Delete promotional emails and newsletters

We've all signed up for email lists and then ignored every email we received. The result is that our Gmail is full of messages that don't serve any purpose.

To delete them, type in the search bar “label:^smartlabel_promo”, you can also do the search with “unscribe” or “newsletter”. Take advantage of this to unsubscribe from the newsletters that do not interest you and delete all the emails you don't need.

If you don't want your personal account to be filled with this type of content, you can create an auxiliary email account and use it to sign up for newsletters, and even to register on social networks. This way, your "real" account, the one you have, will be yours. you use for your personal, work or academic communications will be safer from hacker attacks.

3. Use filters and tags

To ensure that once your account is clean you don't have to perform this deep cleaning operation again in the future, get used to using filters and labels that segment information based on how the messages arrive.

Follow the path: Settings > View all settings > Filters and blocked addresses > Create new filter.

Enter the parameters you think are appropriate to create a new filter. For example, using certain keywords or creating a filter for emails that have large attachments.

Then select “Skip from Inbox” (to archive the content), “Apply Label” or “Delete”. This will cause incoming messages to go away. automatically organizing according to what you have indicated.

Although it may seem complicated at first, it is actually very simple. We encourage you to try it, because you will notice that it quickly improves the way you manage your emails and will save you a lot of time.

4. Archive emails to clean up Gmail

Person holding phone opening Gmail.

If you are never quite sure about permanently deleting an email because you think you might need it in the future, you can clean up the inbox archiving information.

Select the emails that you no longer need to be in your inbox and click the “Archive” button. You will no longer see them in the foreground, but they will be archived and available for you to access at any time.

This doesn't free up space in your account, but it does significantly reduce the amount of information you see when you open your inbox and helps you work more efficiently. more efficient and better manage your communications.

5. Use the “Clean up space” option

Gmail has its own tool to help us free up space. On the left sidebar, go to “Storage,” where you will find an option called “Manage space” or “Clean up space.” By clicking on it you will see the emails that contain large attachments and old emails., that is, information that Gmail interprets as being deletable.

Check which emails appear in that section, and if your criteria matches the one for cleaning Gmail, you can delete them all directly.


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