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Gilbert Zhang / 9.29.2023Home / Email Security
How to delete all promotions in Gmail—a step-by-step guide
If you’re decluttering your inbox, deleting promotional emails is a good starting point. Learn how to delete all promotions in Gmail in a few clicks.
Gmail has several useful email management features, including separate tabs for promotional emails and social updates. This categorization ensures that important mail reaches your main inbox while the rest goes to the corresponding tab.It also simplifies inbox organization as you can find unnecessary mail in one place and delete it in bulk to free up storage. This guide will show you how to delete all promotions in Gmail at once and teach you about the additional steps you can take to keep your inbox clean.
Source: Gmail screenshotAll emails will move from the Promotions tab to the Trash folder, which Gmail will empty on its own after 30 days. If you want to permanently delete emails from Trash without waiting, take these steps to do it manually:
Source: Gmail screenshotNote that deleting promotional emails won’t help you avoid Gmail’s ads, which are placed quite prominently in the Promotions tab. They can distract you and damage the overall user experience, but there is no way around them besides signing up for one of Gmail’s paid plans.
Source: Gmail screenshotYou can remove the tab from the app by taking these steps:
Source: Gmail screenshotThis button isn’t visible in the app, so you have two options for unsubscribing once you open the mail:
Source: Gmail screenshotAs you report spam, Google’s detection algorithm should get better at identifying it. In case the email is a phishing attempt, refrain from taking any action that would reveal your sensitive information.Gmail users often become targets of phishing, which can have severe consequences. While your chances of falling victim to it depend on how cautious you are, it helps to have an email provider that isn’t as appealing to malicious parties.In other words, you should choose a privacy-first email service that knows how to keep your data safe.
Big Tech email providers often combine these two measures and advertise their solutions as safe. This claim isn’t entirely true, however, mainly because they own and store the encryption keys. Google can decipher your Gmail messages and read their contents at any given time. It also exposes your data to substantial risks, as a breach of Google’s servers can result in hackers stealing the keys.Privacy-first email providers don’t compromise user data—they implement end-to-end encryption (E2EE) by default, ensuring your correspondence is completely private. Emails are encrypted and deciphered using keys created by your device, protecting your privacy from third parties as well as the provider.If this sounds appealing, consider Skiff Mail, a secure alternative to Gmail and other mainstream email services.
Advanced security is only one of Skiff Mail’s many benefits—you also get:
Source: Skiff
Source: Skiff
Take control of your inbox with Skiff MailSkiff Mail's powerful organization features help you efficiently manage your emails, including promotions
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How to delete promotions in Gmail
To mass-delete all promotional emails, follow these steps:- Go to the Promotions tab next to Primary above your inbox
- Click the checkmark underneath the search bar
- Doing this will select all emails from the given page. To expand the selection to all emails, click Select all [XXX] conversations in Promotions
- Click the bin icon above the inbox
- Confirm the action in the pop-up window
- Click the down-facing arrow in the left-hand menu to expand the folder list
- Go to Trash
- Click Empty Trash now above the inbox
- Confirm the deletion
How to delete promotions in the Gmail app
Deleting promotions in Gmail’s app is far more inconvenient than doing it through the web version because the app doesn’t have a bulk-select feature—you must select conversations one by one. If you don’t mind this and still wish to delete emails through the app (perhaps because you don’t have many promotional emails), you can take the following steps:- Click the hamburger icon in the upper-left corner of the screen
- Go to Promotions
- Press and hold the email you want to remove (skip the first email or two if they’re marked with Sponsored because these are ads)
- Tap on all the emails you want to delete
- Tap the bin icon above the inbox
How to delete the Promotions tab in Gmail
Besides deleting promotional emails, you can remove the entire Promotions tab from your inbox if you don’t want the tabbed view. Here’s how to do it on the desktop/browser version:- Click the gear icon in the upper-right corner of the screen
- Go to See all settings
- Open the Inbox tab
- Deselect Promotions under Categories
- Scroll down and click Save changes
- Tap the hamburger icon and scroll down to Settings
- Under Inbox, go to Inbox customizations > Inbox categories
- Toggle Promotions off
Tips for maintaining a clean Gmail inbox
Deleting promotional emails is only the first step to organizing your inbox. It doesn’t do much in the long run because you will keep receiving new messages from advertisers. Worse yet, you may be receiving spam that doesn’t get sorted to its dedicated folder automatically, so it ends up in your inbox.To prevent these issues, you should take two steps that go beyond deleting emails:- Unsubscribe from newsletters you no longer follow
- Block and report spam emails
How to unsubscribe from emails in Gmail
To prevent unwanted ads and updates from the newsletters you’re not interested in, use Gmail’s convenient unsubscribe feature. Take the following steps to remove yourself from email lists:- Open the email you want to unsubscribe from
- Click Unsubscribe in the header next to the sender’s email
- Confirm the unsubscription
- Find the sender’s unsubscribe button (typically placed at the end of the email)
- Tap the three-dot icon in the upper-right corner and choose Unsubscribe
How to report and block spam
Spam emails might evade Gmail’s detection and reach your inbox, causing distractions and potentially exposing your data to significant risks. Deleting them isn’t enough because you will most likely receive more from the same sender, so you should block them and report the email. Take the following steps to do so:- Open the spam email
- Click the three-dot icon in the upper-right corner
- You’ll see the option to block the sender and report spam or phishing. Choose the corresponding option and confirm it
Why choosing a privacy-first solution is important
Gmail has various benefits, but it falls short when it comes to the most essential aspects of emailing—privacy and security. It’s well-known that Google implements invasive practices, from mining personal data to tracking users’ online behavior.It also doesn’t do enough to protect users' data from external attacks. Gmail relies on two protective measures to encrypt data, as explained in the following table:| Encryption | Overview |
| Transport Layer Security (TLS) | A basic protocol offering modest protection for data in transit, which has been tied to numerous vulnerabilities |
| AES-256 | A stronger form of encryption algorithm protecting data resting on Google’s servers |
Embrace a clutter-free workspace with Skiff Skiff Mail's advanced encryption protects your correspondence, while intuitive organization tools help you manage it
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Safeguard your correspondence with Skiff Mail
Skiff Mail is an end-to-end encrypted email service that prioritizes users’ security and confidentiality. It protects your emails with two distinct keys:- Public key—Encrypts the email and is shared with the recipient
- Private key—Decrypts the message and is safely stored on the user’s device
Other security measures Skiff employs include:
| Security measure | Overview |
| Secure Remote Password | Encrypts your login credentials, other critical account data, and encryption keys for added security |
| Two-factor authentication (2FA) | Uses a one-time passcode generated by the Authenticator app to safeguard your account |
| Tracker blocking | Blocks trackers used by advertisers and spammers to prevent them from gaining information about your email behavior |
- 10 GB of end-to-end encrypted storage
- Fast email search despite no unencrypted data on servers
- Integration with various crypto wallets
- Folders, labels, and filters
- Custom signatures and one custom domain
Complete protection beyond emailing
Skiff’s product suite consists of three end-to-end encrypted platforms besides Skiff Mail:- Skiff Pages—A note-taking and document-editing app as a secure alternative to Google Docs. It keeps your files’ contents and key metadata end-to-end encrypted and offers invite-based collaboration
- Skiff Drive—An E2EE cloud storage solution supporting files of all types and sizes. You can also take advantage of its integration with InterPlanetary File System (IPFS), the largest decentralized cloud platform
- Skiff Calendar—A calendar app that automatically syncs with Skiff Mail and lets you create shared calendars. You can hold secure video conferences through the dedicated built-in tool
Sign up for Skiff Mail
You can leverage all of the above features and platforms in three quick steps:- Go to the signup page
- Choose your username and password
- Explore Skiff’s E2EE product suite
