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Tell HN: Easy and Effective Gmail Cleanup

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Tell HN: Easy and Effective Gmail Cleanup

#1

Post by jinct »

My Gmail was nearing the 15GB free tier limit. I tried a few things to try to pinpoint the largest emails to delete, from searching for large attachments to writing code to count emails by sender. The problem was there were no large emails, just many thousands of often daily marketing emails. Identifying and deleting emails from frequent senders proved quite labor intensive.

In the end, the simplest solution was the most effective. I searched for the word "unsubscribe", selected all results across all result pages, and deleted them. I searched my Trash for a few senders I wanted to make sure not to delete email from, moved them back to the inbox, and I was done.

Easy.

Re: Tell HN: Easy and Effective Gmail Cleanup

#2

Post by nivertech »

How much time did you already spent on it (and will need to do in the future also)?

A Google Workspace account for a single user is relatively cheap.

So I'm not sure it was economical.

But the problem with the paid account, is that you may easily lose it in case of a CC failure/expiration.

Re: Tell HN: Easy and Effective Gmail Cleanup

#3

Post by NoZebra120vClip »

nivertech wrote: post #2

How much time did you already spent on it (and will need to do in the future also)? A Google Workspace account for a single user is relatively cheap. So I'm not sure it was economical. But the problem with the paid account, is that you may easily lose it in case of a CC failure/expiration.

I have a subscription to Google One (which is what you mean; Google Workspaces isn't a subscription, it's a suite of apps.)

It has some good perks. I am, however, petrified of going over the "free tier" storage limit, because if I do lose, or cancel, that One membership, then my Gmail will be completely disabled until I can bail out enough storage to go back under the 15GiB again. I think that's an extremely undesirable failure mode indeed.

That being said, searching for "unsubscribe" is definitely a genius shortcut, and I'm going to try it and see how it works for me. However, I also have enough personal correspondence over the years, with significant attachments that I'd need to scrutinize as well.

Re: Tell HN: Easy and Effective Gmail Cleanup

#4

Post by animeshz »

I really like the yahoo mobile interface, for one it lists all the subscriptions and unsubscribe button at one panel, second its search is really powerful and can pick all the matching mails from certain sender, or having some word occurring (unlike Gmail, in its mobile you can't select all, and in desktop everything is paginated).

It also lists all transactions mail in one panel, so you can clear them at once if everything is checked, you can however use gmail to filter down the promotional and spam emails and clear them at once from desktop.

I initially thought of using python or something with SMTP, but it wasn't that feasible than how much mobile yahoo client helped me. I trimmed down 6 mailbox with over 20k mails each (one of them going over 43k), to around 40 mails on each.

Re: Tell HN: Easy and Effective Gmail Cleanup

#9

Post by nivertech »

NoZebra120vClip wrote: post #3
nivertech wrote: post #2

How much time did you already spent on it (and will need to do in the future also)? A Google Workspace account for a single user is relatively cheap. So I'm not sure it was economical. But the problem with the paid account, is that you may easily lose it in case of a CC failure/expiration.

I have a subscription to Google One (which is what you mean; Google Workspaces isn't a subscription, it's a suite of apps.) It has some good perks. I am, however, petrified of going over the "free tier" storage limit, because if I do lose, or cancel, that One membership, then my Gmail will be completely disabled until I can bail out enough storage to go back under the 15GiB again. I think that's an extremely undesira…

Do you know whether it's possible to prepay / pay for advance for a subscription?

Re: Tell HN: Easy and Effective Gmail Cleanup

#10

Post by anderiv »

NoZebra120vClip wrote: post #3
nivertech wrote: post #2

How much time did you already spent on it (and will need to do in the future also)? A Google Workspace account for a single user is relatively cheap. So I'm not sure it was economical. But the problem with the paid account, is that you may easily lose it in case of a CC failure/expiration.

I have a subscription to Google One (which is what you mean; Google Workspaces isn't a subscription, it's a suite of apps.) It has some good perks. I am, however, petrified of going over the "free tier" storage limit, because if I do lose, or cancel, that One membership, then my Gmail will be completely disabled until I can bail out enough storage to go back under the 15GiB again. I think that's an extremely undesira…

FWIW Google Workspace is indeed a subscription - it’s their business-focused offering, whereas Google One is consumer-focused. That said, there’s nothing preventing individuals or families from using Google Workspace - I do, and have for over a decade.

Workspace allows you to use your own domain and provide email/collaboration services for a number of people under the same domain.

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