How to Delete All Emails on iPhone

How to Delete All Emails at Once on iPhone

Fearing the users of the Mail app might accidentally delete every single email they’ve ever received, Apple decided not to include a select all button and make it easy for users to get rid of all emails at once. But just because deleting all emails on iPhone isn’t easy doesn’t mean that it’s impossible.

In fact, all it takes to delete all emails at once on iPhone are a few simple steps that anyone can complete in less than a minute:

1. Open the Mail app.
2. Go to any folder with emails you want to delete.
3. Select the Edit button located at the top of the screen.
4. Tap the very first email in the folder.
5. Tap and hold the Move button at the bottom with your thumb and, at the same time, tap on the first email again and release the Move button.
   • Your iPhone may appear stuck for a few seconds, so be patient.
6. You will be presented with the option to move all emails from their original folder to a new one. In our case, you want to move them to the Trash folder.
   • Again, this process may take a while, so be patient and avoid interacting with your phone while you wait for your emails to be moved to the Trash folder.

As you’ve probably already noticed, this method has one major limitation: it only works with one folder at a time. While that’s not really a problem if you keep your emails in just one folder, it can become quite annoying to repeat the same steps over and over again with multiple folders.

How to Remove an Email Account from iPhone

Removing an email account from the Mail app is arguably the simplest way how to instantly mass delete emails on iPhone. Yes, this option is what some would call “nuclear” as it means that you will no longer be able to receive new emails.

1. Open the settings app.
2. Click on the Mail category (it may also be called Contacts or Calendars, depending on your version of iOS).
3. Select the email account you wish to remove.
4. Click on Delete Account.
5. Confirm your choice by clicking on the Delete Account option again.

Don’t worry: removing your email account from your iPhone doesn’t delete the email account itself. You will still be able to access all your emails from the web or using a different email app. Removing your email account from your iPhone also doesn’t delete the emails from the server—only from your iPhone.

How to Delete Emails on iPhone Individually

Although being very time-consuming, removing emails individually gives you the most control over which emails you keep and which you remove. This method is best for those with relatively small inboxes, but we wouldn’t recommend it for anyone else. Today. There are much better ways how to delete emails on iPhone, including those described later in this article. But if you want to prune your inbox one-by-one, this is how to do it:

1. Open the Mail app.
2. Find an email you wish to delete.
3. Swipe over the email from the right side of the message to the left with one finder.
4. Tap on the Delete button.

How to Delete Multiple Emails on iPhone

Usually, it’s easy to tell which emails can be deleted just by reading the subject. If your inbox consists of a mix of personal conversations and marketing garbage, you might find it useful to know how to delete multiple emails at once:

1. Open the Mail app.
2. Click any folder that contains emails that you would like to delete.
3. Click on the Edit button.
4. Click on each email that you would like to delete to mark it.
5. Click on the Trash button in the bottom-right corner to deleted selected emails.

This will move your emails to the Trash folder. To delete them from the Trash folder, navigate to it and repeat the process. Yes, this means that you have to repeat the same procedure twice, but the second round should be quicker since the Trash folder contains only the email you wish to delete.

How to Factory Reset an iPhone

Sometimes, emails are just one of many things taking up free space. If you would like to erase your iPhone completely, you can do so by performing a factory reset to delete all data and settings. We strongly recommend you make a backup beforehand because otherwise you couldn’t go back and restore your iPhone to how it was before.

1. Open iTunes on your Mac or PC.
2. Connect your iPhone to your computer.
3. Select your iPhone when it appears in iTunes and click the Restore option in the Summary panel.
4. Click Restore again to confirm.
5. Set up your iPhone as new.

How to Delete All Emails from One Sender on iPhone

Some senders don’t know when enough is enough. If you have a colleague who always writes ten emails to say one thing, or if you’ve ended up on a subscription list of a business with a marketing department that’s way too eager to show the boss that it deserves its budget, you know who we’re talking about.

By deleting all emails from the most active senders, you can easily free up gigabytes of email storage space and make your inbox far more organized. Even though the iOS Mail app doesn’t make it obvious how to delete all emails from one sender, the process isn’t too complicated, and all you need to do is follow the steps below:

1. Open the Mail app.
2. Select any inbox you want.
3. Tap the search box at the top of the page and type in the sender whose emails you want to delete.
4. Tap the Edit button located on the bottom right of the page.
5. Select any email from the sender.
6. Tap and hold the Move button at the bottom with your thumb and, at the same time, tap on the selected email again and release the Move button.
   • Your iPhone may appear stuck for a few seconds, so be patient.
7. You will be presented with a new screen with all your email folders, including Trash.
8. To delete all emails from the sender, simply select the Trash folder and watch the emails disappear.

You can now repeat the process with other senders.

Follow our guide on how to delete all emails at once on Android.

How to Delete All Emails in Gmail on iPhone

If you want to learn how to delete all emails in Gmail on iPhone, we have bad news for you: the iOS Gmail app doesn't have any feature that makes it possible to delete all emails at once. Because of this serious limitation, which Google doesn't seem to be eager to fix, we have to take a different approach and delete multiple Gmail emails from the desktop version of Gmail.

To access the desktop version of Gmail on iPhone:

1. Open Safari and go to: https://mail.google.com/
2. If you're using iOS 13 and above, tap on the small "Aa" icon on the left side of the URL bar and select the "Request Desktop Website" option.
3. If you're using iOS 12 and below, tap and hold on the "Refresh" button next to the URL bar and select the "Request Desktop Site" from the popup window at the bottom of the screen.
4. You should now see the desktop version of Gmail. If not, click on the hamburger menu icon and select the "Desktop" option located on the bottom. Make sure the Standard desktop view is selected because the simple HTML view is very limited when it comes to features.

Once you have the desktop version of Gmail opened in Safari, you can delete all emails using the following steps:

1. Open the folder from which you want to delete all emails.
2. Click on the blank checkbox located in the toolbar at the top and select "All".
3. Gmail will ask you if you want to select all emails in the folder, so confirm your decision.
4. Click the trash can icon to delete all emails at once.

How to Delete All Emails on Yahoo

Yahoo Mail features an inbox cleaner whose sole purpose is to archive old emails so they don't clutter your inbox. To use the inbox cleaner:

1. Open the desktop version of Yahoo Mail in your favorite web browser.
2. Click on the arrow to the Right of the Inbox tab.
3. Click the "Clean your inbox" option.
4. A pop-up window will appear, asking you to confirm your decision to archive your emails. Click the "Archive emails" option to confirm.

Depending on how many emails you have, it may take some time for the task to finish, so be patient. If you want to go a step further and delete emails on Yahoo that were archived, here are the detailed steps:

1. Open the Archive folder.
2. Select All from the drop-down menu.
3. Click on the Delete button to delete all archived emails.

How to Keep Maintain Zero Inbox

With a clean inbox, your next goal should be to maintain Zero Inbox. To achieve it, we recommend you deal with new emails as soon as possible and immediately unsubscribe from any newsletter you don’t want to receive. If you’re inbox gets out of hand anyway, you can always run Clean Email again and easily go back to Zero Inbox.

It’s also useful to have a dedicated inbox for marketing emails, so you can delete it entirely from time to time and keep your main inbox cleaner.

Wondering how to delete multiple emails on Mac or delete old emails? Visit our blog to find out how to reach Inbox Zero!