Gmail’s 15GB free storage sounds generous until you hit that dreaded “storage full” notification. I’d been putting off dealing with my cluttered inbox for months, assuming it would take quite a bit of tedious sorting. But when I finally sat down to tackle it, I discovered that cleaning up my Gmail storage was easier than expected.
The trick isn’t spending hours. Instead, I focused on finding the biggest storage hogs first. I reclaimed substantial storage space without losing anything important by targeting specific areas. And if you want to prevent your inbox from filling up again, using email aliases to filter out spam can help keep things under control.
This is how I found out what was actually taking up space
It’s not the text emails—it’s their baggage
Screenshot by Yasir Mahmood
Mindlessly deleting emails is a waste of time. Gmail doesn’t make it obvious which messages are hogging your storage, so I needed a way to identify the biggest offenders first. My first realization was that the sheer number of emails wasn’t the core problem. A plain text email is small—measured in kilobytes. So, it wasn’t about achieving “inbox zero.” It was a targeted hunt for the heaviest files that were clogging my 15GB quota.
My first stop was Google’s own storage manager. It’s the easiest way to get a high-level overview. You can find it by clicking your Google account image at the top-right of your Gmail inbox. Then click the cloud icon. That opens the Google One storage dashboard, which breaks down usage by Gmail, Google Drive, and Google Photos. This confirmed Gmail was my biggest offender. After clicking Clean up space, the tool also surfaces a “Large items” category, which is an excellent place for a quick win—I found files I hadn’t seen in years.
I used Gmail’s advanced search operators to free up space
Search operators let you target massive emails in seconds
Screenshot by Yasir Mahmood
While the storage manager is suitable for a quick look, Gmail’s advanced search operators prove more handy. This is where I found the bulk of the wasted space.
Type has:attachment larger:10M in the search bar to find all emails with attachments over 10MB. It filters your entire inbox—even archived mail. You can adjust that number—try 5M, 15M, or even 25M depending on what you’re looking for. This immediately surfaces the heavy hitters that are eating up your quota.
I reviewed this list, downloaded the few important files to my local hard drive, and then hit Delete.
I also combined some operators. Using older_than:5y has:attachment finds every email with an attachment that’s over five years old. This made it easy to bulk-delete ancient history without fear.
I adopted a slash-and-burn strategy for newsletters and notifications
I unsubscribed from everything I hadn’t read
Screenshot by Yasir Mahmood
Newsletters and automated notifications pile up faster than anything else in Gmail. I’d subscribed to dozens of services over the years, and most of them were just clutter at this point.
Since I have customized my Gmail inbox and enabled tabs, I used Gmail’s search function to wipe out entire categories at once. Type category:promotions in the search bar to pull up every promotional email in your inbox. Select all visible messages, then click the link that says “Select all conversations that match this search.” This lets you grab thousands of emails in one go, rather than the 50 or 100 that appear on the screen. Hit Delete, and they’re gone.
“Select all conversations that match this search” only appears if you’ve selected Most recent instead of Most relevant sorting order.
The same approach works for other categories:
- Type category:updates to find app notifications, delivery confirmations, and account updates.
- Type category:social to surface Facebook notifications, LinkedIn messages, and similar social media alerts.
- Type from:newsletter-domain.com if you want to target specific senders.
I also used the is:unread older_than:6m search to find emails I hadn’t opened in the past six months. If I hadn’t bothered reading them by now, I wasn’t going to.
The real time-saver was unsubscribing as I went. It’s easier to unsubscribe from useless newsletters in Gmail with the Manage subscriptions page in the left sidebar. Gmail also displays an Unsubscribe link at the top of promotional emails. Clicking it means fewer emails clogging up your inbox moving forward. If that link doesn’t appear, scroll to the bottom of the email—most newsletters include an unsubscribe option in the footer, but I prefer Gmail’s Unsubscribe link rather than using the footer link for good.
This aggressive pruning cleared out tens of thousands of messages with little effort. If you prefer a more automated approach, third-party tools like Clean Email can help ease the process. It offers features like bulk unsubscribe, smart filters, and scheduled cleanups to keep your inbox organized without manual intervention.
I took out the trash to make the space official
Empty the Trash and Spam folders to reclaim space
Screenshot by Yasir Mahmood
Deleting emails doesn’t immediately free up storage—it just moves them to trash, where they sit for 30 days. I opened the Trash folder and clicked Empty Trash now to permanently remove everything. I did the same for the Spam folder. A few minutes later, I refreshed Gmail and checked my storage. The space was finally back.
Now I follow the “one-touch” rule as a personal management strategy. When an email arrives, I deal with it immediately, either reply to it, archive it, or delete it. I’ve also set an annual calendar reminder to search for emails larger than 10MB and remove unneeded attachments. It’s maintenance—like any other routine task—but it keeps storage issues from creeping back up.
