Let’s face it: You probably rake in tons upon tons of unwanted email each day. How many of those are from retailers’ mailing lists? How many more are junk email messages that you would never open in a million years? If the answer to those questions is «a ton,» and you’re not sure where to start when it comes to decluttering, we’re here to help.
Whether these newsletters and promotions you’re getting are from websites or stores that you’re truly interested in or you don’t know how you got on a certain list, all hope isn’t lost. If you’re a Gmail user, even better.
Previous iterations of Gmail made it easy for you to remove yourself from rogue newsletters that you forgot you signed up for, but you could only unsubscribe yourself from one at a time. Now, Google lets Gmail users batch unsubscribe from multiple newsletters all at once, effectively cleaning up your inbox but also giving you the peace of mind you probably didn’t know you could achieve this time of the year.
Below, we’ll show you where to find and how to use the feature in the mobile apps and the websites.
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Where to find the new Manage Subscriptions feature in the Gmail app
Before you can use the feature, you should check to see if you have it first.
- Open the Gmail app on your iPhone or Android phone
- Tap the menu bar at the top left (three stacked lines)
If you have the feature, Manage Subscriptions should be below the Trash section.
Where to find Manage Subscriptions in Gmail for the web
- Log in to Gmail from a web browser
- On the left, click More
- Click on Manage Subscriptions
The feature is currently rolling out to the web, Android and iPhones in select countries, so you might need to wait a bit if you don’t have the new view just yet.
How to manage subscriptions from the new view
Once you arrive at the Manage Subscriptions section, a list of the newsletters you’re currently subscribed to will be displayed, sorted by the most frequent senders and the number of emails they’ve sent in the past few weeks.
Tapping directly on the sender name will bring up the most recent emails received, and you can easily unsubscribe by tapping the icon to the right of the name, which looks like an email with a minus sign «-» in front of it.
Once you’ve tapped that unsubscribe icon, Gmail will ask if you want to stop receiving emails from the sender. Once you tap unsubscribe, an email will go to the sender notifying them of the unsubscribe request.
It can take a few days for the sender to honor the request, but going forward, all emails sent by them should be sent to your Spam folder.
If you want to get an even better grip on Gmail, don’t miss these 10 tips.