How to Clear or Clean up Your Gmail Inbox

Most people have a Gmail account these days, and at least some of you might have realised - with an unpleasant shock - that the space in your inbox is getting filled up. Gmail has a pretty huge 15GB limit, but over the years, mail tends to build up, and many of us are probably reaching those limits now.

Luckily cleaning up your Gmail inbox isn't a challenge, thanks to some Gmail's own tools and some third party apps as well. We've found a few reliable ways to quickly clean your Gmail inbox. Start now and we promise it won't take more than half an hour.\

Gmail search filters:

Gmail doesn't have the option to sort files - you can't get the inbox to display mails alphabetically, or according to the date received, or size. This might sound like a problem, but as is to be expected from a Google company, Gmail has a superb search function, which can be used to solve the problem easily. Follow these steps to clear up the emails you don't need:

1. Sign in to Gmail > go to the big search bar at the top.

2. First, let's clear out the emails taking up the most space. Type Larger:10M in the search bar > hit enter or click the magnifying glass icon.

3. This will find emails taking up more than 10MB. Now select the mails you don't want > delete (trash can icon).

4. You can experiment with different file sizes, depending on how much you need to delete.

5. The obvious next step is to clear out emails from the long ago. You can use Before:YYYY/MM/DD to specify a cutoff date, or older_than:years if you want to search for mails that are one, two or more years old. For example, if you want mails that are older than one year, you can type older_than:1y > press enter to see the list, and then select mails > delete to make space.

6. You can use combinations of commands, so if, for example, you want to delete old mails with attachments that are more than 1MB in size, then type the following into search: has:attachment larger: 1M older_than:1y > press enter, then see the list, and select items > delete mails.

7. In case you're starting to worry about remembering all these operators, then you will be happy to know that Google has you covered. Click on the downward pointing arrow at the right corner of the search bar, and you will see the advanced search, which lets you apply all these filters in a simple menu.

Find Big Mail:

Find Big Mail was the only way to - well - find big emails in Gmail, until Gmail added the filters we mentioned already. The app is still pretty useful because it automates the process of finding mails that should be deleted and also creates labels so you can find them again later without any difficulty.

Follow these steps to clean up that messy inbox:

1. Head to the Find Big Mail website > enter your Gmail address in the big form > click Find Big Mail.

2. Now Google will ask you to authorise this service. Enter your password (if you haven't logged in already) > click Allow access.

3. The service will now begin scanning your inbox. It claims that it only sees the size of your emails and not the content. Once scanning is complete, you will get an email alert. Ignore the email.

4. On the left side, under the links for inbox, sent mail, etc., you will see new labels. If you don't see this, expand the labels menu. You will see four labels: FindBigMail - Top, FindBigMail > 1MB, FindBigMail > 5MB, FindBigMail > 10MB. Click any of these > select the emails you don't need > delete.

5. The advantage of this method is that you don't need to repeat the search later to find the worst offenders, if you're running out of space again.