The quickest way to inbox zero is here. Thanks, iOS 9.
The pain of an increasing inbox count can be felt many a day here at iMore Boston HQ, but thanks to a tip from RjakActual on Reddit, I can now entertain the glorious thought of having it all vanish into the digital wind.
Yes, thanks to iOS 9, you too can delete ALL your email from a given inbox with just three taps. (You can also mark everything as read, but that's less fun.) Here's how to go about it.
How to delete all your email on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch
- Open the Mail app.
- Tap the inbox you'd like to relieve of its unread count.
- Tap Edit.
- Tap Trash All (or its less-fun cousin, Mark All).

- Tap the Trash All/Archive All confirmation alert (or, if you're Marking All, tap Mark as Unread).
Just like that: Your email woes have vanished. I will note that you can currently only do this inside inboxes; inside individual folders and smart mailboxes, you're stuck deleting things piecemeal. And, you know, just for safety: If you delete all your email, you may have a devil of a time getting it back. Technically it goes to the Trash folder, where you can then move it out or delete it permanently... but I wouldn't risk it just to play around.
In any case, while I may never actually use this wondrous feature, I'm certainly going to think about it now and again, when my inbox climbs to an unmanageable amount.
Reader comments
How to trash all your email on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch
They need a way to mark it all spam and the next time emails from same person/company shows up it goes to spam and not your inbox like on my computer.
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I can't recall receiving spam in my inbox in the iOS Mail app. Maybe I'm just lucky.
We need this feature for text message now! Probably much more beneficial to delete all texts.
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Why would I want to trash my Inbox? Unless you are a tech reporter or a business type, "Inbox Zero" is a stupid way to live.
Also, all that will happen if you do this is that your Inbox will be empty and your Trash's (the average user has three and many people have four or five), will then be full. You will then have to empty the Trashes individually (and multiple times) to get rid of the files.
All this does is move files around. It doesn't delete them at all.
Well you don't since you'll be leaving soon.
"Amazing" we still can't see if a mail has been opened or not...
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To the person saying the tip (or at least the title) is stupid: this also works for moving bulk or marking as read. So it's a great tip.
The select-all may not always show on certain inboxes depending on how many different email accounts you may have and who provides them. Example, I don't get the select-all stuff in unread but I do inside each mail's inbox. Each provider has different features, google with archive etc. interesting that the mark all unread works in Today inbox but not Unread inbox.
Thanks Wren for the tip.
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This is a great tip if it worked. Apple deployed trash all in iOS9, but for many users who try to use the feature they find that after trashing all, the emails magically re-appear the next time they open email. On my iPhone 6S Plus and on my iPad this is routing. Clearly, Apple makes very fine toys but pathetic devices for serious work.
What happened? iOS 10 seems to have reverted to not being able to delete all emails from the in box! Arrrgh!
I am in the same boat and I HATE it!! That was my favorite new email thing and I want it back!!!
If you tap "edit" then individually mark each email, then you can press delete and they all go. It's a stupidly laborious process though compared with iOS9