Delete emails on your iPhone or iPad

You can use gestures to delete emails and select Trash or Archive as the default option.

Delete multiple emails at once

1. Open Mail and go to your Inbox.

2. Tap Select in the upper-right corner, then individually select the emails that you want to delete, or tap Select All. To select multiple emails quickly, swipe down through the checkboxes.

3. Tap Trash or Archive. If you only see Archive, touch and hold Archive to see other options like Trash Selected Messages.

Swipe to delete and other ways to discard one email

In Mail on iOS, there are multiple ways to delete one email:

• Swipe left quickly over a single email.

• Touch and hold an email from your Inbox, then tap Trash Message from the menu.

• Tap the Archive button or the Trash button from within an email.

You can also use the steps to delete multiple emails to delete a single email.

Delete emails from a specific sender with categories view in iOS 18.2

1. In the Mail app, tap on a message that you want to delete. All of your messages in that category from this sender will appear in a message list.

2. Tap the More button.

3. Tap Trash All.

You can also swipe left on individual emails in a message list to delete a specific email.

Set Trash or Archive as your default option

Depending on the type of email account you have, you might see Archive instead of Trash when you try to delete emails. You can edit where your deleted messages go in your Mail settings:

1. In the Settings app, tap Apps.

2. Tap Mail.

3. Tap Mail accounts.

4. Tap your account.

5. Tap Account Settings.

6. Tap Advanced.

7. Scroll to Move Discarded Messages Into and select Deleted Mailbox or Archive Mailbox.