Emily Long is a freelance writer based in Salt Lake City.
After graduating from Duke University, she spent several years reporting on the federal workforce for Government Executive, a publication of Atlantic Media Company, in Washington, D.C. She has nearly a decade of experience as a freelancer covering tech (including issues related to security, privacy, and streaming) as well as personal finance and travel.
In addition to Lifehacker, her work has been featured on Wirecutter, Tom’s Guide, and ZDNET. Emily has also worked as a travel guide around the U.S. and as a content editor. She has a masters in social work and is a licensed therapist in Utah.
Gmail does a decent job at filtering junk mail to the Spam folder, but there are always the marketing emails, newsletters, and other mass messages that slip through to your inbox. Maybe you accidentally signed up for a mailing list, or you wanted those promo emails at one point, but now they’ve become too much. You can keep deleting them one by one—or you can take action to remove spam from certain senders once and for all.
Filtering is one of our favorite Gmail hacks for moving junk emails straight to the trash. Select the messages in your inbox from as many senders as you want to filter out, click the three-dot menu at the top of the screen, and select Filter messages like these. On the pop-up, click Create filter and check Delete it. Be sure to also check Also apply filter to [X] matching conversations. Future emails from filtered senders will automatically go to Trash.
If you’re still getting emails from a sender you’ve filtered out, it may be because they’re using multiple aliases on the same domain. To solve this, you can set up a filter for an entire domain. Go to Settings > See all settings > Filters and Blocked Addresses and select Create a new filter. Add the domain (@[domain].com) to the “From” field, select Create filter, and check Delete it.
You can unsubscribe from mailing lists by clicking “Unsubscribe” at the bottom of each individual email you receive, but this is both tedious and a potential security risk, as threat actors have been known to hijack these links for malicious purposes. At minimum, opening the email and clicking any link therein confirms that your email address is active and ripe for targeting. Google updated Gmail last year to include a “Manage Subscription” view, which centralizes mailing list and promotional emails in one place with a one-click unsubscribe option. In the left-hand navigation bar, click More > Manage subscriptions, locate the sender, and click Unsubscribe to be removed from that sender’s list.
Note that Gmail may not pull all email campaigns into this view—if that’s the case for a list you want to unsubscribe from, you can click Unsubscribe at the top of the email itself (next to the sender’s address) instead or use the next step to block the sender entirely.
If you find yourself deleting emails from the same senders over and over, report them as spam instead. This helps Gmail to recognize these and similar messages as junk, which over time can reduce how much clutter actually reaches your inbox. Select the email and click the Report spam button at the top of your inbox to move the message to your spam folder. Gmail automatically deletes spam after 30 days.
Marketing emails typically have tracking pixels—invisible 1×1 images used to monitor online activity—embedded that let senders know when you open a message, which is why you should stop opening emails you don’t want and use one of the above strategies to filter, delete, or block them instead. To add an extra layer of protection, you can keep external images from loading in emails unless you explicitly allow them. Go to Settings > See all settings. On the General tab, scroll to Images and select Ask before displaying external images.
An obvious way to keep junk from reaching your inbox is to avoid giving out your email address in the first place. You can create a second Gmail account to use solely for subscriptions, shopping, service sign-ups, etc. so any lists you are added to are directed straight to a separate inbox. Gmail also has unlimited aliases via “plus addressing,” so you can easily see where spam is coming from. Or you can create burner accounts via “hide my email” services in browsers, password managers, or Apple iCloud.
Emily Long is a freelance writer based in Salt Lake City.
Emily Long is a freelance writer based in Salt Lake City.
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