For more than 1.8 billion people in the world, there is one service that rules them all: Gmail. A primary conduit for communication, the email service that Google launched in 2004 is now as prevalent as the iPhone, a Windows laptop, and the deep blue sky.
I created my first Gmail account way back in 2005, and my current account has existed since 2012. My life revolves around email, but sometimes those revolutions can run a bit slow. Hampered by too many emails, I find myself clicking and waiting for an email to open and waiting again to see the attached files.
I knew I had to solve the problem. Google doesn’t provide a lot of guidance for speeding up one’s Gmail inbox, likely because the company doesn’t want to admit it runs slow at times. I decided to “learn by doing” and discovered several tips and tricks that helped speed up the service.
Take a Surgical Approach
My Gmail is severely cluttered and choking on too many emails and hundreds of labels. I needed to do major surgery. I started by disabling a few extensions and add-ons for Gmail, and then deleting a bunch of recent emails, but those actions made a negligible impact.
My theory—which I asked Google about, and which the company did not directly answer—is that Gmail has to spend extra time loading emails and running searches when it has to keep track of years and years worth of very large files. I never delete any emails, mostly because I can search for old tax forms, dig up contracts, and even find old photos. It’s getting ridiculous, though: I have 652,000 emails that use 162 gigabytes of storage. It was time to do something about it.
To find emails with the largest attachments, use Gmail’s built-in search operators. In Gmail’s search box, start by typing “in:anywhere larger:40M” and review the results. This will surface emails in any of your subfolders with attachments totaling more than 40 megabytes. In my case, I only found three emails with a massive attachment, so I tried “in:anywhere larger:25M” and then got nine emails with excessively large files. It was easy to glance through them and determine if they were worth keeping. (If you’re feeling adventurous, you can also use the new Gemini AI for Gmail bot to search for emails with large attachments.)
Once you hit delete, make sure you empty the trash as well, otherwise those emails—and their large files—will stick around. On the left side, click Trash, then More, then Empty trash now.
One of Gmail’s standout features is the ability to apply labels to emails to help you sort the contents of a busy inbox. But labels are just one more thing for Gmail to keep track of, and old labels that don’t matter to you anymore are just clogging the pipes. There’s no easy way to bulk-delete labels, so you have to manually remove them. To do that, click Manage Labels in Gmail’s left-hand menu bar. Scroll down to your list of labels, then select Remove label for all your unused labels. I removed 350 labels! The emails are still there, but I’ve shed the weight of those obsolete sorting systems I no longer need.
I also deleted very old emails. To find your oldest emails, click All mail on the left, then on the upper right click the displayed pages to see Oldest instead of Newest. Select all emails on the screen and delete them as needed, clicking through each page of emails to see more. You can also use the “older_than” search operator; type “older_than:1y” in the search bar to see all emails more than one year old. Try “older_than:2y” and so on. (The Gemini bot might also be able to help find older emails here; give it a shot if you prefer chat-style searching.)
For me, after deleting large files and labels, and deleting thousands of old emails, Gmail ran noticeably faster.
One other fix has to do with how many files you view in your inbox. It’s a basic rule of computing, especially in web-based apps: Showing less information on the screen means the app doesn’t need to work as hard. Go to Settings, then See all settings. Look for the pop-up next to Maximum page size and select a lower number, say 25. I found this setting did help even in an older, clunky Gmail account from years ago.
Cache Out
I wanted to do more, and I was tempted to clear my browser cache, which is a catch-all solution for speeding up web performance. For every site you visit, files and settings are stored locally, and as those things build up over time, they can slow down your browser. There’s a downside to clearing the cache, though: You’ll lose all your saved sessions and you’ll have to log back into all your websites, not just Gmail. Instead, it’s better to clear the cache just for Gmail.
This might sound onerous, but it’s easier than it sounds: To clear the cache for one site, first go to that site (in our case, Gmail.com). Then, in Chrome, press F12 (or go to View > Developer > Developer tools) to bring up the developer tools. Click on the Application tab at the top, and click Clear site data. This really sped things up for me, even more than deleting large files and labels. I was cooking with gas, but I felt like things could still be faster.
Start Over
This is a more dramatic solution, but it’s amazing how well it works. A few years ago, I switched Gmail addresses because my old account was too clogged. I started over with a new Gmail inbox that was sprightly and trim. It felt like buying a brand new car. Of course, the downside is that you have to let everyone know about your new email address. That’s easier than you think.
After creating the new Gmail address, go back to your old one. In Gmail, go to Settings and click See all settings, then scroll down to the Vacation responder. You’re taking a permanent vacation from your clogged email, so set the date range to run all year long. Type a message about how you’re changing emails, and include the new email address.
You can also forward all incoming messages to the new inbox. Click the Forwarding and POP/IMAP tab at the top, and type in a new forwarding email. Gmail might prompt you for verification from another device to confirm it’s really you. Then, click Proceed. Gmail will also send a confirmation email from the new email address to your old one. In your old account, click that confirmation link.
You’re all set! Everyone will be notified when they email your old account, and you’ll receive incoming emails in your new account.
Whether you follow these tips to liven up an older Gmail account or start over with a new one, the good news is that you’ll notice a speed-up either way. Even my old Gmail account is now faster than ever.
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