The latest versions of iOS Mail app include a “Trash All” function that allows you to quickly delete all emails in an inbox on any iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch. This is the fastest way to delete all emails in an inbox from an iOS device, and can be helpful if you want to clear out all locally stored mail messages from iOS, whether for spring cleaning purposes, because you don’t need the emails anymore, or perhaps to free up space taken up from a hoard of emails on an iOS device.
How to Delete All Email from Inbox in Mail for iOS:
To have the Delete All feature, you’re iOS devices iPhone, iPad, iPod touch should be run on iOS 9 or later. Earlier versions do not have the Trash All Mail feature and would need to go with a different approach.
- Open the iOS Mail app as usual and go to the Inbox you wish to delete all email messages for (select from the Mailbox list if you’re not currently in the inbox you want to delete all emails from).
- Tap on the Edit button in the corner.
- At the bottom of the Mail app window, tap on the Trash All button.
- Confirm you wish to delete all emails by tapping on Trash All.
This sends all of the messages into the Trash box of the Mail app, these will remove themselves eventually but if you want to manually intervene and delete every email message you just sent there right now you can do that too.
How to delete all Trashed Emails in Mail for iOS instantly:
After the emails are sent to the Trash folder, you can instantly delete them all with these steps:
- Tap on the Mailboxes button in the upper left corner of the Mail app
- Select All Trash (if it’s not visible, tap on the Edit button and enable the All Trash inbox by selecting it from the list so that a blue check box appears alongside the name)
- Enter the All Trash inbox, tap on Edit and tap on Delete All this can not be undone so do not do this if you are not absolutely positive you never want these emails again
Once you Delete All, every email in the Trash folder is gone for good, removed from the iOS Mail app entirely.
As mentioned above, this is only available in modern versions of iOS. Earlier Mail app versions allow for deleting multiple emails at once by manually selecting them and sending to Trash which can then be deleted over time or manually the same as instructed above.
