How to delete all promotions in Gmail

Gmail is good at flagging certain emails that you receive as promotions. These are emails that aren’t obviously spam but are nevertheless promoting something or are marketing emails of some type. Some of these may interest you, but it’s also nice to bin all of the ones you don’t want as quickly as possible. To that end, we’ll explain how to delete all promotions in Gmail.

How to delete all promotions on the Gmail website

On the Gmail website, there are a couple of places you can find the emails flagged as promotions.

By default, you’ll see some tabs along the top of your inbox. Your main emails will go to Primary, but emails that appear to be promotional in nature will go to Promotions. Click on this tab to find the promotions.

If you don’t see these tabs, you may not have the default view of Gmail.  These tabs can be added or removed depending on how you like your inbox to be set up, and we go over how you can do this in the last section of this article below.

You can also find the promotions in the left-side menu. You might have to tap More to reveal all of the folders and also expand the Categories section of the menu to see the Promotions folder.

Once in the Promotions tab, click the tick box in the top left to highlight all of the emails on the page.

If you have more than one page of these emails, clicking this tick box will prompt a message at the top of the page informing you that you have only highlighted all of the deals on that page. It will give you the option to select all conversations in promotions. Click on this part of the message to ensure all of the messages are highlighted.

With all the relevant messages highlighted, click on the trash can button near the top left of the window to delete all the promotional emails.

Note that by default, deleting these or any emails sends them to your Trash folder and they will be deleted automatically after 30 days. If you want them deleted sooner then you can empty the Gmail trash folder.

How to delete all promotions in the Gmail app

It’s easier to get on your laptop and follow the steps above than to delete all promotions in the Gmail app. The reason is that there isn’t a select all option in the app, but if you don’t have too many to delete then it’s a relatively quick and easy process.

Start by opening the app. In the top left corner, hit the folders button, represented by three horizontal lines.

Tap on the Promotions folder.

Now you need to highlight each email you want to delete. There are two ways you can highlight each email. You can tap and hold the email or tap the circle on the left of each email. We recommend the latter, as tapping and holding each email takes a little longer, and if you don’t hold the email, you’ll accidentally open it.

With all the emails highlighted, tap the Trash can icon at the top of the screen to move them to the Trash Can folder.

How to filter specific promotions in Gmail

Gmail has filters that allow you to automatically do a whole bunch of things to specific emails when they come in. To filter specific promotions in Gmail, start by going to the promotions tab and opening an email from the sender for which you want to create a filter.

In the top right corner, click on the three dots icon.

On the menu that appears, select Filter messages like this.

The filter criteria popup will appear with that sender populating the From field. If you want to filter all promotions from that sender then the other fields aren’t relevant, but you can specify which emails from that sender get filtered even further by completing them. For example, you can filter any email from that person with an attachment, over a certain size, or with a specific subject line.

When you’re happy, click on Create filter.

Now you’ve decided which emails get filtered it’s time to specify what you want to happen to them.

On the next popup, you can specify what the filter does when the emails come in. Options include Mark as read, Delete it, and Star it. You can also recategorize promotional emails to go to your inbox’s Priority section. To do this, click on the tick box next to Categorize as: and then in the Choose category pulldown box, select Priority.

Once you have decided on how the filter operates, finish the process by hitting Create filter.

How to unsubscribe from promotions in Gmail

Companies are required to give you the option to unsubscribe from their promotional emails by law. You’ll usually find the option to unsubscribe within the email in the small print at the bottom, but it can take a couple of steps and a brief redirect to the vendor’s website. Gmail offers a quicker and easier option.

Go to the Promotions tab in your Gmail inbox, and open an email from the vendor.

Next to the name of the sender, there will be the email address and then a link called Unsubscribe. It’s small and greyed out, but you can click it.

You will be shown the email address and asked if you’re sure you want to unsubscribe. Press Confirm. An unsubscribe request will now be sent to the company. Bear in mind that it can take a few days for vendors to process these requests.

Via this method or not, some scammers do send emails that use the unsubscribe feature to confirm an email account is legitimate. So the irony is that unsubscribing to unknown companies could result in you getting much more spam. It’s safest only to unsubscribe to vendors you know are legitimate and just block the emails of any other sender that you don’t want to receive.

How to manage and remove tabs in Gmail

The tabs in Gmail are handy for separating the likes of promotions and social media emails from your more important messages, but they’re not mandatory. You can remove them or amend which ones show very easily.

On the Gmail website, you’ll see the settings menu in the top right corner, represented by a cog icon. Click on it, then select See all settings.

There are several tabs at the top of the settings menu. Go to the Inbox tab.

Under the sub-heading Categories, you’ll see the names of all the possible tabs, with the ones that are currently visible ticked.

Tick or untick any tabs that you want to add or remove.

When you’re satisfied with it, scroll to the bottom of that screen and hit Save changes.

Return to your inbox, and you’ll see that only the categories that you have selected are tabs along the top of your inbox.

FAQs