How to Delete All Gmail Emails on Android

Clear out room in your phone's email

emails on cell phone

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by Jordan Baranowski
Jordan Baranowski is technology writer with experience writing for SVG, The Nerd Stash, and Feast Magazine. Jordan is also a professional educator.
Updated January 11, 2019

Is your Gmail inbox starting to overwhelm you? It may just be time to purge your email and start anew. Luckily, since all of your Gmail accounts under the same email address are synced up, all you need to do is erase your emails on one device to erase them on every device. Here's how to delete all Gmail emails on Android.

Why Would You Mass Delete Gmail Emails?

Since your Gmail is stored in the cloud rather than in your phone's data, a full Gmail inbox won't eat up your phone's memory. However, there are still good reasons to do it. For one, it will help you stay more organized, meaning no more searching through thousands of emails to find the one you're looking for.

More importantly, clearing out your Gmail inbox will help the Gmail app run smoothly and faster. Even though it isn't stored in your phone's memory, having large email attachments across thousands of emails will slow your Gmail app to a crawl and keep you from navigating your email efficiently. Additionally, your inbox is limited to a certain size; if you have years of accumulated emails piled up, you might hit that capacity before you know it.

How to Delete All Gmail Emails on Android

Deleting the contents of your inbox in one fell swoop is not terribly difficult, but it is a bit time consuming. You can't select your entire inbox on Android like you can on a computer, but you can make it so deleting your email is done with one swipe, which is much easier than selecting each individual email and risk opening one on accident, which will unselect every one you've selected up to that point.

  1. Open the Gmail app.

  2. Tap the menu icon, represented by three horizontal lines, then scroll to and tap Settings.

  3. Tap Swipe actions and you will see settings for Left Swipe and Right Swipe. Tap Change for either option, then tap the Delete option.

    Swipe actions in General Gmail settings on Android

  4. You can now just swipe away your emails when you're looking through your Gmail account, which is much easier than individually deleting every email.

Don't worry if you accidentally swipe away something you wanted to keep, as Gmail keeps all trashed emails for thirty days in the Trash folder. You can go back and move it out of there if you need it.

Is There an Easier Way to Clear My Gmail Inbox?

Unfortunately, when you're trying to clear emails on your Android device, deleting a large chunk at once is time consuming. If you can get to a computer, it makes things much simpler, as it only requires a few simple clicks.