How to unsubscribe from emails on Gmail—A concise guide

Clearing up promotional emails that flood your inbox is possible. Learn how to unsubscribe from emails on Gmail and declutter your online work environment.

Keeping your inbox clean can be challenging even without unwanted emails from newsletters and companies you’ve purchased something from. Most people tend to ignore such emails, so they add up with time and fill Gmail’s storage. They might also cause significant distractions and disrupt your emailing experience.This guide will help you resolve these issues by explaining how to unsubscribe from emails in Gmail and stop receiving unnecessary mail. You’ll also learn what to do if your inbox is too cluttered and organizing it doesn’t seem worth the effort.

Regain control over your inboxSkiff Mail's intuitive design and powerful features make preventing and managing unwanted emails easy

How to unsubscribe from emails in Gmail—the easy methods

Unlike many competitors, Gmail has a consistent, universal placement of the unsubscribe button across emails, simplifying the process. It only requires three steps:

Open the email you want to unsubscribe from
Click Unsubscribe in the header next to the sender’s address
Confirm the action in the dialogue window

Source: Gmail screenshotNote that this button will only appear if the sender has the so-called list-unsubscribe header enabled. If they don’t, Gmail can’t display it, so you’ll need to take the second unsubscribe approach—finding the corresponding button in the email’s contents.The button is typically located at the end of the email, though it doesn’t have to be. It might not even be phrased as “unsubscribe” but as a variation such as “stop receiving mail.”Whatever the case, find and click the link, and it will take you to the sender’s unsubscribe page. You might be asked to confirm your choice, after which you should stop receiving further messages.

How to undo an unsubscribe email in Gmail

Gmail offers an undo option for several actions, such as sending or deleting messages from your inbox. You get a short time window within which you can reverse the action.This feature doesn’t extend to unsubscribing from emails. If you do it by mistake or change your mind, you will need to subscribe once again by going to the sender’s website and providing your email.

How to see the list of email subscriptions on Gmail

Now that you know how to unsubscribe from individual emails, you should learn where you can find all your subscriptions to avoid hunting for them in your inbox.Unfortunately, Gmail doesn’t have a centralized email subscription management menu. This design fault puts it at a significant disadvantage compared to Outlook and Yahoo, both of which provide features that make it easy to unsubscribe from numerous newsletters.Note that your Google account as a whole does have a dedicated subscription section—it, however, doesn’t relate to emails but active subscriptions to different services tied to the Google account.The closest you can get to managing subscriptions in one place is to look for them in the Promotions tab, which you can find next to the Primary tab above your inbox.

Source: Gmail screenshotThis tab is where most promotional emails should go, as long as Gmail’s algorithms detect them accurately. As the algorithms aren’t perfect and advertisers keep developing new strategies to reach your main inbox, the tab might not contain all your subscriptions. Still, going through it might expedite the unsubscription process.

Can you mass unsubscribe in Gmail?

Gmail doesn’t offer an option to unsubscribe from emails in bulk—you must do it manually for each sender you no longer wish to receive emails from. This lack of a mass unsubscribe feature is quite inconvenient, especially if you have numerous subscriptions you are no longer interested in.Many users resort to third-party unsubscribe services and email cleaners. They promise to declutter your email in only a few clicks and help prevent further unwanted mail.While this is true to an extent, third-party email cleaners often don’t meet users’ expectations. One test showed that it takes weeks for these apps to show results, which was disappointing as they still didn’t remove all subscriptions and unnecessary emails.Worse yet, the price you pay for using such services goes beyond money. Specifically, email cleaning and unsubscription services ask for lots of personal data. Their invasive privacy practices include asking you to hand out your login credentials, and the app having access to your account and emails might make you uncomfortable if you’re a privacy-conscious user.Privacy concerns aside, you wouldn’t get much value out of a typical unsubscribe app as it does the same thing you can do in Gmail natively—it creates rules and filters that merely move emails to specific folders like Spam or Unsubscribed. With all of this in mind, third-party services are not worth it.

What to do if your Gmail inbox is too cluttered

The lack of a reliable way to unsubscribe from all emails at once can make cleaning your inbox too laborious. If this is the case and your inbox feels overwhelming, you might want to change your email address and start fresh.You can create another Gmail account or take this as an opportunity to find a more suitable provider. Doing the latter might be a good idea if you prioritize email privacy and safety, as Gmail isn’t a particularly secure option.Several things contribute to Google’s poor security, most notably:

By default, the service relies on Transport Layer Security (TLS), an encryption protocol tied to numerous vulnerabilities
Google stores and owns your encryption keys, which means they can decipher and read your emails
The company has fallen victim to multiple cyberattacks, exposing users’ data to significant risks of theft

You need a privacy-first email provider to minimize external threats and ensure your correspondence can’t be spied on.

Access total privacySkiff Mail guarantees security, quality, and feature-variety

Benefits of privacy-first email services over Big Tech solutions

In light of the ever-growing concerns around email security, many users have switched to private email providers that offer various security measures they don’t get with Gmail or Outlook by default. Some of these measures are:

Little to no storing of personal data
IP address protection
Zero-knowledge login

Most importantly, secure email services implement end-to-end encryption (E2EE), the most advanced form of protection. It keeps your emails safe at all points between your device and the recipient.Your email is encrypted before sending using a key created by your device, and the only person who can decipher it is the recipient holding the mathematically related decryption key. Nobody else can access the email’s contents, including the provider.Only a handful of email services offer such security. If you need a suggestion, check out Skiff Mail.

Skiff Mail—A secure alternative to Gmail and other Big Tech solutions

Skiff Mail lets users regain complete data control by implementing strong end-to-end encryption. Each email is secured using two separate keys:

Public encryption key—shared with the recipient
Private decryption key—stored on the user’s device

Skiff can’t access the keys, so even their team won’t be able to decipher your emails. You can enjoy complete privacy and confidentiality from the moment you sign up.With Skiff’s zero-knowledge login, you can get started without leaving any personal information. Your login credentials, other critical account data, and encryption keys are encrypted using the Secure Remote Password algorithm for additional account safety.

Source: SkiffOther notable features of Skiff Mail include the following:

Beautifully designed, user-friendly interface without clutter
Two-factor authentication (2FA) using the Authenticator app
Fast email search that lets you browse emails’ contents
10 GB of end-to-end encrypted storage, significantly more than what you’d get with most privacy-first email providers
Integration with numerous crypto wallets (Coinbase, MetaMask, Brave, and more)
Folders, labels, and filters for detailed email organization and automation
Skiff.com aliases that let you manage emails from multiple addresses in one inbox

If you want to learn more about the above features and security measures, check out Skiff’s whitepaper. The codebase is also publicly available on GitHub, as Skiff Mail is open source.

Leverage Skiff’s comprehensive E2EE suite

Many of Gmail’s security drawbacks extend to other Google products, such as the Workspace suite. To let you collaborate in a safe environment, Skiff offers three additional end-to-end encrypted platforms you can access at no extra cost with your Skiff Mail account:

The following table offers an overview of the platforms’ most notable features:

Skiff Drive	Skiff Pages	Skiff Calendar
Up to 1 TB of end-to-end encrypted storage	Rich text editor	Automatic syncing with Skiff Mail
Optional integration with the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS)	End-to-end encryption of each file’s contents and key metadata	Built-in video conferencing
Support for files of all sizes and types	Real-time collaboration and version history	Shared calendars

Skiff’s suite is accessible through most modern devices thanks to excellent cross-platform support. It’s available on iOS, macOS, Android, Windows, and major browsers.

Source: Skiff

Get started for free

All of the listed features are available with Skiff’s rich free plan, which you can sign up for in three steps:

Visit the signup page
Choose your username and password
Explore Skiff Mail and other E2EE products

If your needs exceed those of an average user or you need ample storage for your files, you can upgrade to one of Skiff’s three paid plans:

Plan	Cost
Essential	From $3 per month
Pro	From $8 per month
Business	From $12/user per month

Skiff offers one-click migration, which makes it easy to transfer your correspondence and data from Gmail. You can complete the process effortlessly and rest assured, knowing that no unencrypted copies are stored on Skiff’s servers.

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