Why Deleting iCloud Emails Is Important
You are probably reading this article because your iCloud emails are taking over your life. If you haven’t organised or deleted old emails for a while, your storage may be full, and you may be finding it hard to focus and complete important emailing tasks.
The benefits of a decluttered inbox are:
- You can locate important messages easier.
- You can keep your iCloud storage for free! After 5GB, you will have to pay for more storage.
- Decluttering any space helps to ease your mind and allows you to focus.
- You can enhance your daily work life and increase your motivation and productivity.
So, what happens when you delete a message?
Well, by default, deleted emails are moved to Trash. You can also set up your deleted messages to be sent to Archive or another folder, where you will have to delete them from there.
Once a message has been moved to Trash, it will stay there until 30 days is up. After this period, all emails in the Trash folder will be permanently deleted.
So, before you delete iCloud emails, be sure to keep important ones!
How To Delete All iCloud Emails
You can perform this action on the mobile app or the web.
How to delete all iCloud emails at once on iPhone
You can easily mass delete iCloud emails from your Inbox folder at a time within the Apple Mail app. Here is how:
- Open the Apple Mail app on your iPhone.
- Go to Mailboxes and choose your iCloud mailbox.
- Tap Edit at the top right of the screen.
- Now tap Select All.
- Finally, tap Delete.




This will send ALL emails within the Inbox folder to the Trash folder. If you want to permanently delete these messages, empty your Trash.
How to empty Trash:
- Go to iCloud.com on your mobile device and sign in with your Apple ID.
- Click the Mail icon and open your mailbox. From your Inbox tap Mailboxes at the top left of the screen and click the Settings gear icon.
- Choose Empty Bin… option.
- Click Empty Bin again to confirm your action.
- Alternatively, on mobile, you can go to the Apple Mail app, choose the Bin folder, click Edit → Select All → Delete.


How to delete all iCloud emails on Mac:
- Open the Apple Mail app on your laptop.
- Go to Inbox and press Command + A. This will select all messages in this folder.
- Now click the Bin icon on the top toolbar to delete selected messages.
Learn more about how to delete all emails on iPhone and how to delete multiple emails on Mac.
How To Delete iCloud Emails In Bulk
There may also be the case when you need to delete multiple emails instead of removing them all. You can mass delete as many emails as you need. This means you can select dozens of messages and remove them but keep the important ones!
How to delete multiple emails on iCloud on Mac
- Launch the Apple Mail app on your Mac.
- Go to the Inbox folder. Long press the Command button and click on messages that you’d like to remove.
- When all the messages are selected, click the Trash icon on the top toolbar to send them to Trash.


How to delete multiple emails on iCloud on iPhone
- Open the Apple Mail app and choose your iCloud mailbox.
- Tap Edit at the top right of the screen.
- Now tap the empty checkboxes near messages that you’d like to be removed.
- Finally, tap Delete at the bottom right of the screen.
Delete iCloud Emails with Clean Email App
To make life so much easier, you can invest in using a third-party app. These apps will do more than just delete your emails, they will help you organise your whole mailbox, and create a system that works for you!
The Clean Email solution can not only help with deleting messages, but it also has features to clear unwanted subscriptions, create automated rules, and overall increase your email productivity.


But first, here's how Clean Email can help delete iCloud emails.
1. Remove multiple messages from the same sender
By default, Clean Email groups messages from the same sender into bundles meaning you don’t have to set up additional filters to open all messages from one sender. From here you can easily select multiple messages or select them all and send them to Trash.


💡 Note: There is also the Delete button on the action toolbar. When you click Trash, your messages will be sent to the Trash folder where they will stay up to around 30 days until they are completely removed. When you click the Delete button, your messages will be permanently deleted. Read more about these two options here.
2. Remove similar messages from Smart Folders
Clean Email’s Smart Folder feature bundles similar emails into easy-to-review bundles. For example, you can choose a folder like ‘Productivity tools’ to view all notifications from project management tools that you may use. Once you click on a folder you can select all emails and move them to the Trash.


Alternatively, you can go to the All Mail folder and use the sort/filter options to find specific messages you want to remove. You can narrow your search by choosing the size of the messages, their age, and more! All you need to do then is select the emails and move them to Trash.


💡 Note: By deleting all messages within the All Mail folder, you will delete ALL emails and the mailbox will be empty. If you want to keep important messages you have starred or messages from specific senders, be sure to use filters or settings to exclude these emails before cleaning!
3. Other useful features Clean Email has to offer
- Auto Clean: Create automated rules to assist you with decluttering your mailbox. You can set up rules to send messages that meet certain criteria to the selected folders or to Trash immediately as soon as they hit your inbox. Save time and automate your inbox management!
To create a new rule, just click the Auto Clean tool from the left-side pane and press + at the top of the screen.


- Unsubscriber: With Unsubscriber, you can remove yourself from unwanted mailing lists with just several clicks. Just click the Unsubscriber tool from the left-side pane, choose the subscription you no longer need, and choose an action like Unsubscribe, Keep receiving, Pause, Deliver to “Read Later”, and more options. Read more about what each option means here.


- Screener: When you enable the Screener feature, the app intercepts all emails coming from new senders and keeps them quarantined for your review. They won’t get to your Inbox folder without your review.


- Cleaning Suggestions: The Cleaning Suggestions feature provides you with shortcuts to clean up your messages quickly. These suggestions are based on similar messages that you have previously managed, or based on similar emails that are frequently cleaned by other app users.


Clean Email cares about your privacy and security, so we never share or sell user data to any third parties! Read more about our policy here.
Wondering to get more inbox management tips and tricks? Check out our guides on how to organise iCloud emails, how to delete Mail storage on Mac, and how to delete old emails.
Deleting iCloud Emails - FAQs
How do I mass delete emails from iCloud?
If you are on mobile, launch your Apple Mail app and open your iCloud mailbox. Then click the Edit button, tap the empty checkboxes near the necessary messages, and click Delete. If you are on desktop, launch the Apple Mail app and go to your Inbox. Long press the Command button and click the messages you’d like to be deleted. Then click the Trash icon.
Why can't I remove the iCloud email?
You cannot delete the primary email address used for your iCloud account. You can delete any alias email addresses you create.
What takes up the most space on iCloud?
For most users, messages, photos, and backups take up the most space in iCloud. Emails do not usually take up too much storage.