My Gmail Cleanup Query

About once a month, I run a simple query that helps me keep my Gmail account clean.

Here is the query

unsubscribe before:YYYY/MM/DD has:nouserlabels is:unread

Here is a breakdown of what’s going on this query:

• unsubscribe — it’s looking for any email that has the word “unsubscribe” in it, which is required of all emails that are sent from a mailing list.
• before:YYYY/MM/DD — it’s looking for any email sent before a specific date. I generally go back to the first day of the previous month. So, since I’m writing this on August 11, 2024, the value I put in is 2024/07/01.
• has:nouserlabels — I use labels in Gmail quite consistently, to tag receipts, shipping notifications, emails from frequent senders, etc.
• is:unread — here it’s looking for emails that are “unread,” or have not been opened.

In summary, “show me all emails that are from a mailing list that were sent before July 1 that I haven’t tagged/labeled and that I haven’t opened.”

I’ve found that if the email is more than a month old, I haven’t read it or labeled it, and it’s from a mailing list, I’m not going back to it, and it’s safe for me to delete.

I run this query from the regular Gmail viewer in a web browser at mail.google.com.

I put the query in the search bar at the top of the screen and press Return/Enter to run the query.

The query will run and show the results in the main Gmail window.

You may see an option for “Select all conversations that match this search,” which will allow you to select all the results that match your query, especially if you have more than 50 results (Gmail generally limits search results to 50 per screen.) You can select this option if you want, or delete 50 at a time.

Finally, I click the checkbox to select all results, and then I select the Trash icon or Delete button.

The delete process may take a few minutes to run, depending on how many emails you’re deleting, but once the process is finished, you should have far fewer emails in your inbox.

There are additional filters, or search operators, that you can add to the query, depending on your specific needs or use of Gmail.

I encourage you to run this regularly — once a month or at least once a quarter — to help keep your inbox clean.