How To Automatically Empty Gmail Trash

Countless spam or other emails will keep piling up. The more you store them in your trash folder, the more space they can take up in your Gmail storage. Of course, Gmail storage has a limit. You can’t store an endless amount of emails. 

Some might even pose a threat. Like emails that ask for your personal bank information, password, or other sensitive information. It doesn’t matter what these emails are for, it is a good idea to delete them. Now, the good thing is, Gmail will delete the emails in your trash folder automatically after 30 days. 

But, if you can’t wait that long, you should do it yourself. To limit the amount of storage these emails take, you should get rid of them. If you want to remove all of them, here is how you can do that. Just follow these simple steps and you will delete these emails forever. 

Step 1

To empty all the emails in your trash folder, open the trash folder first. It is on the left side of the screen. Then, click on the empty square right above your emails. 

Step 2

All the emails in your trash folder will be selected. Above your emails, you will see the “Delete forever” option. Click on it. 

What About Setting a Timer for Deleting Emails?

Let’s say you want to set a schedule that would automatically delete all of your emails on your Gmail account. If that’s the case, you will have to rely on a 3^rd party service. Unfortunately, Gmail doesn’t have that feature. 

For that, you will need the Google Apps Script. You can write a script that would enable time-based triggers. These triggers will mark certain messages to be deleted after a set amount of time. For example, you can set the script to run between 1:00 and 2:00.

Once you specify the time, the script will delete the emails automatically. Before you can use these scripts, you have to authorize access to your Gmail service. 

If you want to find the saved scripts, you can check your Google Drive. To do this, you need to have experience with writing scripts. With a script, you can do a lot more. You can set custom functions, menus, macros, or whatever you like. 

It is great for personalizing your Google sheets, documents, and more. To use these scripts you need experience. It is much easier to let Gmail delete the emails in your trash bin automatically. But, if you think you can handle it, you should try writing scripts. 

Conclusion

Gmail will empty the trash bin automatically after 30 days. If you want to speed up the process, you can always select all the emails and delete them from your Gmail account. Now, if you want to set a timer for deleting emails automatically, you would have to rely on scripts. 

However, you need to have some previous experience with scripts if you want to make it work. Let us know if you found this guide helpful in the comments below.