How to Mass Delete Your Emails

Your inbox holds years, maybe decades, of conversations, sensitive information, and forgotten messages that could put your privacy at risk.

If your email account is ever compromised, those old emails could be used against you. That’s why more people are turning to Redact.dev – a powerful email deletion tool – to clean up and secure their email history.

In this guide, we’ll show you how to use Redact to mass delete emails across Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo, iCloud, and other providers with full IMAP support.

Please note – mass deleting your Emails using Redact requires a Redact Ultimate subscription. You can try Redact for free on Twitter/X, Discord, Reddit and Facebook!

Why Delete Old Emails?

Deleting old emails isn’t just about decluttering. It’s about protecting your privacy, security, and control. Here’s why email deletion matters:

Minimize breach exposure: Less data = less risk in case of a hack.
Prevent sensitive leaks: Old conversations can contain personal or professional risks.
Simplify your inbox: Reduce overload and boost productivity.

Why Use Redact to Delete Emails?

Works with Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo, iCloud, and other IMAP email services
Delete emails by keyword, sender, subject, body, or date
Remove emails in bulk or selectively
No tracking, no data sharing – Redact runs locally, on your machine and was built for privacy
Great for personal cleanup, professional data hygiene and companies

1. Download and Install Redact

First, head over to Redact.dev and download the app. It’s available for both Windows and macOS.

Go to redact.dev and click Download located in the top right corner

2. Connect Your Email Account

Follow the secure authentication steps to connect your account to Redact.dev.

In Redact.dev, select Email from the list of supported platforms.

3. Choose Mailboxes to Clean

Redact allows you to delete from one or multiple mailboxes. Use the “Select All” checkbox to choose everything, or pick specific folders (like Inbox, Sent, or Archived). Use the reset button if you want to start over.

You can select 1 or multiple mailboxes in your email server for Redact to delete, clicking the “Select All” checkbox will select multiple mailboxes that are displayed, clicking the “Reset” link will revert all the actions to the default state and typing a username in the search input field will sort the list according to what you have input.

4. Filter by Date Range

Need to delete emails from a specific time? With redact.dev you can bulk delete your emails before or after a certain date.

Start Date – deletes emails after a selected date.
End Date – deletes emails before a selected date.

This is perfect for wiping emails from a particular year, job, or personal chapter.

The date range settings also allows you to schedule automatic deletion of all content after a set time period – for example, automatically deleting all emails that are older than 12 months.

Mass deletion of emails can be specified by Start Date (only delete emails after this date) or End Date (only delete emails before this date). You can select by month by clicking the month label, and by year by clicking the year label. Clicking the Reset red text will reset the date value for that field.

4. Delete or Preserve Emails by Keyword

If you’re looking to bulk delete specific emails about a certain subject, Redact.dev has precise keyword filters you can use.

You can search and bulk delete all emails with specific keywords in either the subject line, or in the body of the email.

If you want to preserve specific conversations in your email inbox, and delete everything else – you can also preserve all content that has specific keywords in the subject line or email body.

Just type your keyword, click Add, and Redact.dev will find matching emails. Use “Clear All” to remove all filters.

Want to protect or target emails according to word(s) in the subject line of your emails? Redact can search and delete (or whitelist) your emails by subject or email title. Enter your chosen subject in the input field, and click the add button to add it. To remove a subject, just click the “x” that is in line with the keyword. To clear all Subject, click the Clear All button.

Redact will find, delete or exclude your Emails by body content. Enter your chosen body content in the input field, and click the Add button to add it. To remove a Body Content, just click the “x” that is in line with the keyword. To clear all Body Content, click the Clear All button.

5. Bulk Delete Emails from a Sender

If you want to bulk delete all emails from a specific sender, you can filter your mass email deletion based on the sender email address.

You can also set specific email senders to preserve – meaning Redact.dev will delete all your emails except the ones from the senders you’ve set to preserve.

This is useful for deleting newsletters, old clients, or sensitive threads with specific people.

Want to target specific user emails? The Redact Software will find, delete or exclude your emails by sender's email. Enter your chosen email in the input field, and click the add button to add it. To remove an Email, just click the “x” that is in line with the keyword. To clear all selected emails, click the Clear All button.

6. Filter Your Deletion by Email Status

Redact also lets you apply advanced filters for email deletion, based on email flags. This way, you can;

Bulk delete “seen” Emails
Delete all “answered” Emails
Mass delete “flagged” emails
Wipe your “draft” emails

You can choose to include or exclude these categories for even more precise control over your Email bulk deletion.

Redact has 4 types of filters for emails; seen, answered, flagged, and draft. When selecting these types, ‘.’ means that the emails will only be targeted by Redact if you otherwise have rules that include it. ‘-’ means that you want Redact to skip over the that type or you mean to KEEP that. ‘+’ means that the emails MUST be included in the deletion.

7. Choose Your Email Deletion Mode

Redact offers four deletion modes to fit your needs – so you can mass delete emails with as much (or as little) precision as you want.

Preview Mode – this lets you see all results based on your filters, before you delete anything.
Select & Delete Mode – this lets you preview all matching emails, and bulk-select as many as you want for permanent deletion.
Deletion Mode – instantly erases all matching emails based on your filters.
Schedule Deletion – allows you to automate ongoing email deletion based on your filters.

We recommend previewing before running a full deletion to avoid accidental loss.

Want to simply delete your entire email history? Want to completely remove all emails you ever sent or received? The Redact App can easily do that for you. To delete all emails in your account, just skip the settings options and go straight to one of the options at the very bottom. Those options are called "deletion mode", "preview mode", and "select and delete mode". Take note that content deletion is irreversible when you choose "deletion mode". Deletion mode is recommended only if you have used the Redact Software previously and are comfortable with how it works. Once you choose deletion mode, your emails will be gone forever. Instead, use preview mode to do a dry run and ensure your settings are correct, then go to deletion mode.

Take Control of Your Inbox

Your email history is part of your digital footprint. Whether you’re protecting your privacy, preparing for a job change, or just starting fresh, Redact.dev makes bulk email deletion fast and easy. Minimize the risk of a breach or leak – wipe your emails today.

Download Redact and take back control of your inbox. You can try Redact for free on Facebook, Discord, Reddit and Twitter.

Redact also supports a massive range of major social media and productivity platforms – check them out here.