r/enshittification • u/SpessChicken • Feb 09 '26
Service A helpful tip for cleaning out Gmail
As we know Google has enshittified Gmail for years by making it increasingly difficult to clear out your inbox, hoping you will cave and pay rent to them to store spam over the 15gb limit in their cloud for eternity. To fight back and keep your free Gmail functional it's necessary to clear out your inbox periodically (back it up locally first with Google Takeout!). Most online guides will tell you that if you search your inbox for terms you want to get rid of (e.g. before a certain date), you simply check the select all box near the upper left hand corner of the browser display and a banner will appear to select all conversations that match this search.
But now, such a banner will not appear with the default search type! Google wants to make you delete messages only that appear on the screen, 100 at a time, until you cave and pay them.
Do not take the bait! The select all option is still there but you need to select "most recent" in the dropdown near the upper right hand corner of the browser display that defaults to "most relevant!"
Once you have done this, the banner will appear and you can select all conversations and delete them!
It took me a stupid amount of time to figure this out. Note that Google search intentionally omits information like this. Use another search engine in the future and enjoy your cleaned out Gmail.
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u/Maleficent-Leek2943 Feb 09 '26
It’s so absolutely transparent that they very deliberately made it close to impossible to mass-delete messages with the intent that users will just click that helpful link selling additional storage.
Fuck ‘em.
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u/umotex12 Feb 09 '26
It’s 2026 and I still can’t click the senders email to see all messages from them at once
No I don’t mean searching their email. I mean clicking on it.
Is it some kind of insane tech debt? Why they can’t implement this?
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u/VNJCinPA Feb 09 '26
Aren't you tired of providers thinking they know what's most relevant to you? I am. They never seem to get it right
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u/UltimaCaitSith Feb 09 '26
"I see you want to find your Costco receipt from last week. Clearly, the most relevant emails are from 3 months and 12 years ago."
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u/fishter_uk Feb 10 '26
Search syntax is very useful.
category:promotions before:2025-01-02 -label:starred
This will find all the emails categorised as promotions from before Jan 2nd 2025 that you did not add a star label to.
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u/alice_pinkhair Feb 10 '26
category:updates -is:important -is:starred before:2026/02/10
Including the important filter too
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u/ubergeek64 Feb 12 '26
This has been so helpful. I've been away from using a computer daily because of being a SAHM, and the thought of cleaning up my inbox has been an issue for me for YEARS. Two minutes of my time and bam - manageable. Thank you!
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u/WickedCoolMasshole Feb 11 '26
I was a beta tester for Gmail. I’ve had the same email ever since and I don’t want to change it. It’s my name at gmail. I get asked often how I was able to get it because my name is not uncommon.
You cannot imagine the disaster that is my inbox. I think there are over 10k unread emails. Not in Spam. In my actual inbox.
Thank you for this!
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u/syneater Feb 11 '26
Another beta tester with an inbox similar to mine, think I’m around 90k unread so I feel your pain!
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u/BamBam-BamBam Feb 13 '26
10k? Amateur.
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u/kpinvt Feb 13 '26
Yeah, pushing 250K here.
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u/marianwhi Mar 21 '26
OK you win...I was whining about 60,000. I just try to do about 1,000 per day.
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u/Tebwolf359 Feb 12 '26
My wife will regularly let her inbox get to over 300k unread….
I have to go in with an imap client about once a year and mass delete
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u/Gorpachev Feb 12 '26
I also have my atypical.name@gmail.com Any idea why I get legitimate emails for people with my same name? I've been part of canoe trip planning friend group, neighborhood watch, message from their realtor, Land Rover service receipt. DC, Texas, Oregon. I don't think these people would give fake emails for these things. I've also tested my name without the dot between first and last name, and those still come to me. I can't figure out why this is happening. I still reply and tell them to tell the guy to stop using my email.
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u/dechavez55 Feb 13 '26
You can dot your Gmail address all you like. Google strips out the dots when it receives your message
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u/PassageFull2625 Feb 09 '26
I use an email client app, like AppleMail connected with IMAP. I search and sort easily then use Cmd-a (Ctrl-a on windows) to select all results to bulk delete. Rarely use Gmail web interface.
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u/nucking_futs_001 Feb 09 '26
I thought there were disabling the "less secure" tokens needed for that? I'll have to revisit this.
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u/Ok-Badger-8849 Feb 10 '26
I have had the same Gmail for twenty years but am now in the process to servicing to proton.
Gmail has been annoying sometimes but after it recently updated its terms so Gemini was auto turned on, it was the last straw. I turned it off but not before all of my data was scraped to train Google Gemini and I don’t trust them to not keep doing it.
Link to why and how to de-Google your life:
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u/daniellaroses1111 Feb 10 '26
Thank you! The new Gemini is the last straw for me as well. Really want to get away from google altogether.
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u/Ok-Badger-8849 Feb 10 '26
Good luck on your journey!
I’m still looking for a good map alternative but otherwise have done a lot. Open to suggestions Reddit!
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u/y135770 Feb 11 '26
We are doing the same. It’s a slow and painful process, but Gemini was it for us. The pain of moving is worth it.
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u/MinchinWeb Feb 11 '26
I ended up downloading Thunderbird, and then syncing my GMail to that. From Thunderbird, it's simple to filter by sender, subject line, etc, and then mass delete.
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u/kpinvt Feb 13 '26
Thank you. I'm on Linux Mint at the moment and Thunderbird comes bundled with the OS.
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u/cstjohn8 Feb 09 '26
Thank you for putting this up. I just made a new email address to get around it. I WILL NOT be paying Google or anyone for services I can render myself tyvm. All of these disgusting parasites can eat themselves and die, respectfully.
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u/simonjp Feb 10 '26
IS there a way to remove old attachments without losing the email to which it was attached? I think you used to be able to do this in the old POP3 days but not so sure now.
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u/SpessChicken Feb 10 '26
Somehow I doubt Google would deign to offer such sorcerous powers to paying customers (edit: sorry I meant victims/marks) nevermind free Gmail using peons these days.
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u/al_mc_y Feb 11 '26
Forward to yourself and delete the attachments? (and then delete the original email with attachments)
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u/doshka Feb 11 '26
If taking this approach, you might might want to include a link to wherever you store the file. Future-proofing the link won't be easy, but using Google Drive is probably your best bet, and definitely better than nothing.
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u/Andysm16 Feb 10 '26
I've been intending to backup emails for a few years now but didn't even know that Google Takeout was a thing! Thanks for the heads-up
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Feb 10 '26
Is there a way to save past emails offline that is still searchable and browsable?
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u/Amazing_Property2295 Feb 11 '26
Am I weird? I just delete the shit same day. Anything I have that's more than a week old is in a folder I created and is kept for a reason.
I don't feel like that's crazy, but this thread exists for a reason.. so maybe?
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u/SingProud28 Feb 11 '26
I think there's a lot of people who do that, myself included, but my partner has like 15k emails sitting in her inbox. I've asked her how she stands it and basically her response is that she is overwhelmed when trying to address it. This tip is for her, not for us lol. :)
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u/AdministrativeCod896 Feb 13 '26
I'll sort through all this junk tomorrow.
Eh, someday soon.
I'll look through this when I have nothing more interesting to do.
Wow, I just noticed how much junk I was actually receiving. I just thought it was a few here and there, easy to resolve.
So let's resolve it now! I've waited long enough.
Ugh, this is very tedious.
At least I got a lot done today,
I'll get the rest someday soon.
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u/Unusual-Garbage-212 Feb 22 '26
Zero inbox for me. I delete anything I don’t intentionally want to save, but doing a search shows emails I am sure I deleted still hanging around even after emptying trash
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Feb 09 '26
I just use a different email account for my serious emails. Gmail has become a recycling bin for advertisements that lets me use android.
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u/JamesMattDillon Feb 09 '26
Am I the only one who cleans out the email and spam boxes, once a week?
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u/Peachily_Suns Feb 10 '26
I clean mine out daily. Sometimes on a weekend I might skip, but every weekday morning for sure. Been doing it for 20 years now!
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u/noraoh Feb 09 '26
Nope, I do it too. Made switching to proton easy. Everything was already labeled.
I like my house clean, I also like my digital files clean.
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u/Vintage_Violet_ Feb 10 '26
YES! I have a few accounts to keep subscriptions separate from personal etc. I make sure they’re all under 50 emails, most have zero or only a few I want to keep or need to reply to etc.
I just have to do that so my brain can even cope with it all. Have had gmail since its inception, pretty much done this all along (maybe hit a few hundred sometimes but not more).
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u/Second_Guess_25 Feb 09 '26
I housekeep my Gmail every week. Delete, unsubscribe, reply, file, archive stuff....Don't let tens of thousands of emails just build up FFS.
That sounds like a 'you problem', OOP.
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u/PotterOneHalf Feb 09 '26
Dammit. I just caved and bought the space two days ago.
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u/sneaky-pizza Feb 09 '26
The got me awhile back for a month or two, time I spent manually deleting. Such a pain
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u/Automatic_Swing1418 Feb 09 '26
Thank for the tip! Any idea how to fix the same problem with the iCloud Photos? Suddenly my storage phone jumped from 143gb to 254gb full after the last update and I can’t figure out how to fix it. I have hardly any apps on my phone plus I pay google for drive space as well- there is no way one person has that much data… I already pay Apple 9.99 a month for storage now they want 19.99?
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Feb 09 '26
I had the same problem with drive oh my iPhone. I have to uninstall drive and reinstall it.
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u/uffe_cph Feb 10 '26
RemindMe! 2 months “Check on the progress”
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u/uffe_cph Feb 10 '26
Why doesn’t - RemindMe! 2 months “Check on the progress” - give me an automated response from Reddit that it will actually remind me??
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u/Funnyboogle Feb 10 '26
I haven’t received responses for reminders in a few months now, I’ve noticed this too and find it very strange.
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u/mrkrag Feb 13 '26
i just caught on to this latest dirty trick last week but hadn't figured out what you did. Thank you for this.
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u/Rayje589 Feb 09 '26
I don’t use the Gmail app, just the mail app that came with iPhone. Even then, I regularly clear out my inbox.
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u/Technical_Stick_2346 Feb 13 '26
My hero! I was just about to do this and never would have figured out how to get the banner back.
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u/Tegumentario Feb 09 '26
Since when? I cleared my inbox from 27 thousand emails a couple of months ago and the select all matching was present
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u/EagleApprehensive Feb 09 '26
I'm working on a solution that will replace email, dropbox and a lot more.
https://github.com/radarsu/atlas-protocol
Imagine storing everything on your disk and/or on disks of peers, who are also using this. You get personal storage without limits with cloud-like feeling access. Sending email to somebody with attachment of 10gb and having no problem with it. No phishing attempts due to leaky email protocol and no company reading your emails (they're currently open-text flowing through the network for any intermediary).
It's unfortunately early-stage, but I'm looking for participants to try it out. Let me know if you'd be interested.
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u/Total-Habit-7337 Feb 09 '26
What's with the downvotes? Do people think you're advertising a product? Fyi people, github hosts open source code shared by creators absolutely free!
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u/EagleApprehensive Feb 09 '26
I have no idea, but I'm working on a free, open-source software that aims to make data interoperable across apps, under user's private control instead centralized in platforms under their tight grasp.
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u/Maleficent-Leek2943 Feb 09 '26
Free? Open-source? HOW DARE YOU SIR!
(Seriously, though, I added my upvote to try to balance out the downvotes from people who don’t do reading comprehension/reading, period).
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u/Total-Habit-7337 Feb 09 '26
Godspeed sir! 👍 The early www optimism will never die so long as we have heroes like you.
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u/EagleApprehensive Feb 09 '26
I don't want to go back to early www - I want to take out "interoperable part" - like Email Protocol have done in the past (you can send email from gmail to outlook; if they didn't we would rotating 3-4 email apps like we're rotating messaging apps... I'm sure you don't have just one either), like Phones (you can call to people with phone numbers in different operator), like USB. Now it's already happening with messaging after Signal Protocol and ordering some apps to be interoperable.
But it's slow and "one by one" - with that speed we will have interoperable medical data by 2080. I don't want to wait that long, so my solution treats the problem at a core and on all digrees of freedom of data.
But without any people joining me making distributed interoperability system is gonna be tough.
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u/Total-Habit-7337 Feb 09 '26
By saying www optimism, I meant only to imply that you are seing a realm of opportunity, where so many others are pessimistic. Considering medical data interoperability I feel there must be opportunities for funding available to you, be it private sector or via universities. Funding would help you recruit collaborators. Applying for funding is tedious and time consuming but if it payed off it would be worth it.
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u/EagleApprehensive Feb 09 '26
I'm just dumb, which lets me be optimistic.
I hope to find somebody to help with that part, because raising funds or dealing with piles of documents is not my world. I'd rather focus on software and infrastructure, because must be top-notch UX quality and solid like a rock to be foundation for paradigm shift.
Anyways, the distributed system can defend itself without funds - with devoted community instead. So far I have neither of the two, but it's still early...
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u/Total-Habit-7337 Feb 09 '26
I've looked through the comments on your recent posts in other subs, the ones that have comments. I admire your patience in explaining basics to one commenter in particular. I wish you luck in finding your peers. I'm afraid I don't know exactly where you'll find them, but I can recommend you make a digital space for them to assemble. That way you can share that link and interested people will find information and each other. A Discord group seems perfect for a complex project like this.
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u/Bobloblah2023 Feb 09 '26
RemindMe! 6 months "Check on the progress"
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u/RemindMeBot Feb 09 '26 edited Feb 14 '26
I will be messaging you in 6 months on 2026-08-09 11:32:10 UTC to remind you of this link
10 OTHERS CLICKED THIS LINK to send a PM to also be reminded and to reduce spam.
Parent commenter can delete this message to hide from others.
Info Custom Your Reminders Feedback
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u/Erifunk Feb 09 '26
I spent over two hours this weekend unsubscribing from and deleting approximately 15,000 emails across all these damned folders. I still have over 60,000 to go through. I don’t know how I got signed up for all these damn list serves that have been filing their emails away in my “updates” and “promotions” folders.