The moment you've been dreading for months (or weeks) has finally arrived. Your Google storage space is almost full, compromising the proper reception of your emails on Gmail. In any case, this is what Google has just announced to you in an email in which a solution is nevertheless offered to you: subscribe to a paid Google One offer to extend your storage capacity.
With only 15 GB of free space to share between Gmail, Google Drive and Google Photos, cleaning out your inbox, and more generally all Google services using the allocated storage, quickly becomes essential.
Before you decide to subscribe to the first Google One offer (billed at 1.99 euros per month for 100 GB of storage) you can undoubtedly get a reprieve. How? Simply by clearing out your Google One storage and deleting unnecessary messages in Gmail. While it is possible to do this manually, the operation can be tedious. To save you this, Google has integrated a Storage Manager into Google One that does some of the work.
1. Go to Storage Manager
Open your usual web browser, and go to the Google One Storage Manager. On this page, you can view the level of storage space allocated to you for each Google application that you use.
This is also the page where Google suggests items to delete to free up space on the storage shared between Gmail, Google Photos, Google Drive, etc.
2. Review the suggested items
Basically, Storage Manager suggests deleting a number of items: junk emails, emails with large attachments, large files, large photos and videos, etc. Depending on what you store on Google One, how many emails (and their attachments) you have, the suggestions for what to delete may vary.
Now click the Review button on the first suggested items. Then select the items you want to get rid of and click Delete. You can also click directly on Delete all to get rid of all the items suggested by Google.
In the pop-up that appears, check the option I understand that deleted items cannot be restored, and click on Delete permanently to get rid of them.
Then repeat the operation for each item suggested by Google. You will not only delete data stored in Gmail, but also items hosted on your Google Drive space, or photos and videos synchronized on your Google Photos account.
In principle, this cleaning assistant should help you delete the majority of unnecessary data without having to manually search for it in the different services (large sent or received emails, trash, junk mail, large photos and videos, etc.)
3. Delete messages by category
Using Google’s space manager, you may have been able to get rid of several gigabytes of data. However, it is possible to go even further by manually skimming through unnecessary emails in your Gmail mailbox.
Your inbox is probably full of ephemeral and useless missives, such as newsletters, promotional messages, or even notifications related to social networks. Typically, these messages end up piling up by the hundreds, even thousands, and despite their small size, they monopolize a significant amount of space on the free storage allocated by Google.
While it is possible to delete each of these messages one by one, this operation may take you hours. To go faster, you can ask Gmail to organize your messages by classifying them into categories. Once set up, the option makes it much easier to locate these messages, each category having its own tab. You can then delete all messages corresponding to each defined category at once and thus clean your Gmail box more quickly.
To reorganize the display of your emails, from the main window of your inbox, click on the icon representing a cogwheel, then on See all settings.
On the Gmail Settings page, go to the Inbox tab, select Default from the Inbox Type drop-down menu, then check the Social Networks, Promotions, Notifications, Forums options displayed below.
Back to your inbox, your messages have been categorized, in tabs. Click on one of them, for example, Promotions, then proceed to delete the messages you do not want to keep.
If you want to delete all the messages in this category at once, check the Select all box at the top left. Then click Select XXXX conversations in [selected category], then click the trash can icon displayed in the toolbar.
4. Create filters to remove unnecessary emails
To complement all the steps taken above, you can use Gmail’s search filters tool to quickly find and delete all unnecessary emails.
To do this, click on the search settings icon displayed in the search field at the top of the window.
In the filter tool that appears, enter the term "unsubscribe" or "unsubscribe" in the line Contains the words then click on Search.
Gmail will then display all emails stored in your inbox that contain the term unsubscribe. Now click on the Select all conversations matching this search menu, then on the trash can icon to delete the messages.
Then click on OK in the Confirm bulk action window that appears. Depending on the number of emails to delete, the operation may take more or less time.
Don't forget to empty the trash once you have sent the messages to the trash. You will find it in the left column (sometimes hidden in the More drop-down menu). Finally, click on the Empty Trash menu to permanently delete the messages.
Then repeat the same operation with other terms likely to be found in promotional messages or newsletters: in addition to "unsubscribe", try with "unsubscribe", "unsubscribe", "unsubscribe", etc.
5. Automate the deletion of unnecessary emails with rules
Searching for emails using very specific keywords will allow you to lighten your Gmail inbox of several thousand emails. But you probably don't want to have to repeat this operation several times a year. While it is possible to unsubscribe from commercial messages and other newsletters, it is clear that the maneuver may prove very time-consuming if you have to review them one by one.
Although it is still recommended to do so, you can (while you get to the end) create rules that will automatically delete these messages for you as soon as they are received. To do this, you can use the same keywords as those mentioned in the previous step: unsubscribe, unsubscribe, unsubscribe, unsubscribe, etc.
Note that you will need to create one rule per keyword. To create a rule with a filter, click on the Gmail settings icon, then click on See all settings.
Then go to the Filters and blocked addresses tab and click on Create a filter.
The Gmail filtering tool will then appear. Enter your keyword in the Contains words field, then click the Create a filter button.
You must now select the action of the filter you have just created. Then choose Delete, then click Create Filter to save your filter rule.
All new incoming emails that include the keywords mentioned in your filter rules will be automatically sent to the trash.
And the good news is that these messages will automatically disappear from the Gmail trash after thirty days if you don't think to empty it manually.
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