How to Delete All Promotions in Gmail at Once on a Mac (2026)

To delete all promotions in Gmail at once on a Mac, open Gmail in Safari or Chrome, click Promotions, check the Select box, click the Select all conversations link above the list, then click Delete. The mail sits in Trash for 30 days. Apple Mail and the Gmail app can't do this in one click.

The count on my Promotions tab crept past anything I could ever read before I did anything about it, and I suspect yours did too. The clicks to clear it take under a minute. The part worth slowing down for is what's hiding in there: the odd gift card, an airline credit, a receipt Gmail filed in the wrong place. So this guide covers the one-click clear, the searches that protect what you'd miss, what your Mac's Mail app can and can't do, and what stops the tab refilling.

How to delete all promotions in Gmail on a Mac

Gmail in a browser on your Mac is the one place that can select every promotional email in one click. Google's help page on deleting email names Promotions as one of the views this works in, and the steps are the same in Safari, Chrome or any other Mac browser.

1. Go to mail.google.com in your browser and sign in.
2. Click Promotions. With Gmail's Default inbox it's a tab above your messages.
3. Check the Select box at the top left, above the list. So far this only selects the current page.
4. Click the link in the notice above your messages. It reads something like Select all 2,000 conversations in Promotions, with your own count.
5. Click Delete, the trash can at the top. If Gmail asks you to confirm, click OK.

Step 4 decides whether this takes one click or fifty. Skip it and Gmail clears a single page, the count barely moves, and you'll wonder why. If no link appears, everything in the tab already fits on that page, so the Select box has caught it all. Planning to unsubscribe too? Look at Manage subscriptions, covered below, before you delete, while the sender counts are still useful.

Three searches to run before you delete everything

Gmail's search operators let you delete most of your promotions while keeping the ones you might want, and you can skip this section if you're sure the whole tab can go. Google's operator list includes category:promotions, and says you can combine operators to narrow things further. Type a search, then use the same Select box and select-all link as above.

Run the third one first and read it, then delete with the first or second. The last time I cleared my own tab, that receipt search turned up a store credit I'd forgotten about, sitting between two sale emails. Gmail sorts this mail automatically, and the sorting gets it wrong sometimes; Google's categories page tells you to drag a misplaced email to the right tab so Gmail learns.

Six months is my usual cutoff. Most offers have expired by then, and anything newer might still be worth a look before a purchase I'm already planning. Adjust the number to taste: older_than takes d for days, m for months and y for years.

One more check if you shop online a lot. Google added a Purchases view in September 2025 that gathers purchase and delivery updates, and its operator list includes category:purchases. Adding -category:purchases to any of these searches is a cheap extra layer of protection for order emails.

The keyboard route: Gmail shortcuts on a Mac keyboard

Gmail's shortcuts can select and delete your promotions without the trackpad, once you switch them on, and two of them need the Shift key on a Mac. Google's shortcuts page has the steps to turn them on:

1. Click the Settings gear at the top right of Gmail, then See all settings.
2. On the Settings tab, scroll to Keyboard shortcuts and select Keyboard shortcuts on.
3. Click Save Changes at the bottom.

Google lists the select-all shortcut as the asterisk key followed by a, and delete as the number sign. On a US Mac keyboard, that means pressing Shift-8, then A, then Shift-3. On a British layout the number sign is Option-3 instead. If Gmail shows the link to select all conversations after the first two keys, click it before you delete, or you'll clear only the current page.

What to do if the Promotions tab is missing

A missing Promotions tab means that category is switched off, or your inbox isn't set to the Default type. A few clicks bring it back, using the path on Google's categories page:

1. Click Settings, the gear at the top right of Gmail.
2. Under Inbox type in Quick settings, select Default, then click Customize.
3. Check Promotions.
4. Click Save.

The same page has a detail worth knowing: archived email doesn't appear in category tabs. If you've archived promotions over the years, clearing the tab won't touch them. After you empty the tab, type category:promotions into the search bar as a second sweep and see whether anything else turns up. Then delete those too, if you want them gone.

Can you delete all Gmail promotions in Apple Mail?

No. Apple Mail can't see Gmail's Promotions tab, so it can't clear it. Gmail's tabs aren't directly exposed to IMAP, the connection Mail uses, which means no Promotions folder shows up on its own for your Gmail account. The same post shows how a Gmail filter and a label can fake one, but that's more setup than most cleanups deserve.

What you might see instead is Mail's own sorting. Apple's guide describes four categories of its own: Primary, Transactions, Updates and Promotions, the last for coupons and sales, with availability varying by region. Mail does that sorting itself, so its Promotions list and Gmail's won't necessarily hold the same emails. Don't take one as a stand-in for the other.

If you want to trim Mail's list anyway, it works like any other selection on a Mac:

1. In Mail, click Promotions above the message list. If it's not there, choose View and turn on Show Mail Categories, the menu Apple's categories guide uses for this setting.
2. Click one message, then press Command-A to select the rest.
3. Press the Delete key or click Delete in the toolbar, as Apple's deleting page describes.

Whether those messages actually leave your Gmail account depends on your settings, and that's where this catches people out. Check Mail > Settings > Accounts > Mailbox Behaviors first. If deletes aren't sticking, our guide to Mac Mail not deleting emails walks through the Trash setting and Gmail's IMAP options. For anything bigger than a trim, I go straight to Gmail in a browser tab. It's quicker than working out what Mail will do. If you'd like Gmail in its own window with real tabs and labels, we've compared the Gmail apps for Mac.

How to get the storage back after deleting promotions

Deleting promotions doesn't free any storage until they leave Trash. Google's storage page says items in Trash and Spam count against your limit until you permanently clear them, and a personal account's 15 GB is shared across Gmail, Google Drive and Google Photos.

1. In Gmail, click More in the left menu, then Trash.
2. Click Empty Trash now in the notice at the top.

Wait before you do that unless space is urgent. Emptying is the step you can't take back, and I usually leave the mail in Trash for a week in case something comes to mind. Google also says your storage figure can take up to 48 to 72 hours to catch up after you delete several large files.

Keep your expectations modest, too. Sale emails are rarely large one by one, so a clean Promotions tab tends to do more for your eyes than your quota. To check, search category:promotions larger:5M and see how little comes back. If you're genuinely short on space, our guide to mass deleting in Gmail starts with the big attachments, which is where the room usually is.

How to undo it if you deleted something you needed

Promotions you deleted stay recoverable in Gmail's Trash for 30 days, after which Google says they're permanently deleted and can't be recovered. To get one back:

1. Click More > Trash.
2. Search for the sender or subject and check the box beside the email.
3. Click Move to at the top and choose where it should go.

Moving a real email to Inbox isn't quite the end of it. If it was filed in Promotions by mistake, drag it to the Primary tab as well, so Gmail has a better idea next time.

How to stop promotions from piling up again

Unsubscribing is the fix that lasts, because it stops the mail instead of cleaning up after it. Try the three options below in order, since each one is blunter than the last.

Unsubscribe with Manage subscriptions

Gmail's Manage subscriptions page lists your senders with a count of recent emails, which makes the worst offenders obvious. In the left menu, click More, then Manage subscriptions, then Unsubscribe next to a sender. Google's page warns that the feature may not have reached your account yet and that a sender can take a few days to stop, and it suggests reviewing a sender's messages first. If a pop-up appears, you can go to the sender's website or click Block instead, though blocking only sends their mail to Spam and leaves you on the list.

I do this before the big delete, not after. Those counts show who's actually sending the volume, and I'd rather see that while the evidence is still in my inbox. Using Mail most of the time? Mail has its own Unsubscribe banner.

Delete future promotions with a filter

A Gmail filter can send every new promotion to Trash on arrival, with no waiting period. To set one up, following Google's filter page, search category:promotions, click Show search options in the search box, click Create filter, check Delete it (the University of Michigan's guide shows the option names), then click Create filter again.

I don't run this one, and I wouldn't suggest it to most people. It trusts Gmail's sorting completely, so anything misfiled goes straight to Trash without you ever seeing it, and one day that will be a boarding pass. Skip the Inbox (Archive it) is a gentler choice with the same quiet inbox. To undo a filter later, go to See all settings > Filters and Blocked Addresses.

Clear old promotions on a schedule with Apps Script

A short Google Apps Script can delete promotions once they reach a set age, which a plain filter won't do. This is for people comfortable pasting a few lines of code; everyone else can repeat the search above every few months. It uses two methods from Google's GmailApp reference, and each run moves up to 100 conversations to Trash:

function clearOldPromotions() {
  const query = 'category:promotions older_than:30d -is:starred -is:important';
  const threads = GmailApp.search(query, 0, 100);
  if (threads.length > 0) {
    GmailApp.moveThreadsToTrash(threads);
  }
}

1. Paste that search into Gmail first and check what it finds. Change 30d if it's too eager.
2. Go to script.google.com, start a new project and paste in the code.
3. Click Run once. Google asks you to authorize the script, and it's asking for access to your mail, so only do this with code you've read.
4. Click Triggers in the left navigation, then Add Trigger, and choose a time-driven trigger that runs once a day.
5. Click Save.

A daily run of 100 clears a backlog slowly, so do the big manual delete first and let the script keep things tidy afterward. For other ways to automate your account, see our Google Workspace automation guide.

Why are some promotions still there after deleting?

Leftover promotions usually come down to one of four things:

• The count barely changed. You checked Select but didn't click the select-all link, so only one page went.
• New ones keep arriving. Deleting doesn't unsubscribe you. Use Manage subscriptions, and give senders a few days.
• Old ones turn up in search. They were archived, so they weren't in the tab. Run category:promotions in the search bar and delete those as well.
• Apple Mail still shows a Promotions list. That's Mail's own sorting, so it can hold mail Gmail filed somewhere else.

Asking Gemini won't reliably shortcut any of this. Google has talked up AI inbox cleanup, but when Android Authority tried it in March 2026, Gemini could filter the writer's email and couldn't delete it. Availability may have changed since, or may differ on your plan, so treat it as a bonus if it works and use the steps above when it doesn't.