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How to unsubscribe from marketing emails in bulk using Gmail's Manage subscriptions
Gmail has a page that lists every sender you receive regular email from, with a count of how many messages each one has sent you lately and an unsubscribe button beside it. It lets you work through newsletters, retailers and mailing lists in one sitting instead of hunting for the unsubscribe link at the bottom of each email. This guide covers Gmail in a desktop browser, with the phone app in Variations.
What you'll need: A Gmail account and a browser on a desktop or laptop. The view is also in the Gmail app for iPhone and Android, which is covered under Variations.
Open Gmail in your browser
Go to mail.google.com and sign in if you aren't already.
Expand the left-hand menu
In the list down the left side of the screen, below Inbox, Starred and Sent, click More. The list expands to show the items Gmail normally keeps hidden.
Click Manage subscriptions
In the expanded list, click Manage subscriptions. Gmail opens a page listing every sender it has recognised as a subscription, with the most frequent senders at the top.
Next to each sender is a count of how many emails they have sent you recently. That number is the useful part: it shows at a glance who is filling your inbox.
Check what a sender has been sending
Click a sender's name to see all of their recent emails in one list. Use this when you don't recognise the name, or when you can't remember whether you still want the emails.
Click the back arrow in your browser, or Manage subscriptions again in the left-hand list, to return to the full list.
Unsubscribe from the first sender
On the right-hand side of the sender's row, click the Unsubscribe button. Gmail asks you to confirm; click Unsubscribe again.
Gmail sends the unsubscribe request to the sender on your behalf. You don't visit the sender's website or fill in anything.
Work down the list
Repeat the previous step for each sender you no longer want to hear from. Senders you have dealt with are marked as unsubscribed, so you can see where you got to if you stop part way and come back later.
Give it a few days
Senders don't have to act on an unsubscribe request immediately. Emails that were already queued may still arrive for a short while. If a sender is still mailing you after about a week, see Troubleshooting.
Variations
Tap the three-line menu button at the top left of the Gmail app, then scroll down and tap Manage subscriptions. The list works the same way: tap a sender to see their emails, or tap Unsubscribe beside their name and confirm.
You don't need the full list to deal with one sender. Open any email from them and look for the Unsubscribe link next to the sender's name at the top of the message. Click it and confirm. This is the same request Gmail sends from the Manage subscriptions page.
Some senders don't offer a proper unsubscribe option. For those, Gmail offers to block the sender instead, which sends all of their future emails straight to Spam. If you see Block rather than Unsubscribe on a sender's row, that's why.
Troubleshooting
Make sure you have clicked More to expand the list, and that the list is showing words rather than icons alone. If it still isn't there, you may be signed into a work or school Google Workspace account where the organisation has turned it off. Try a personal Gmail account to check.
Open one of their new emails, click the three dots at the top right of the message and choose Block followed by the sender's name. Everything else they send will go to Spam. If their emails are outright scams rather than marketing, choose Report spam instead, which also helps Gmail filter them for everyone else.
The list only includes senders whose emails carry the standard unsubscribe information Gmail can act on. Senders who skip that, and emails Gmail has already put in Spam, won't appear. For those, use a filter instead: our Gmail filter guide shows how to send everything from an address straight to the Bin or a label.
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