How Clean Email works

Steps

1. Sign in with Google

   Connect your Gmail account through Google's own OAuth sign-in screen. Clean Email never sees or stores your Google password, and it stores counts about your mail, never the content of your emails.

2. Scan your mailbox

   Clean Email counts, in a few seconds, how many emails can be cleared and how much storage could be freed.

3. Review your results

   Check the numbers, then decide whether to protect any more senders before you clean.

4. Choose and protect senders

   Add any sender's exact address or entire @domain to a protected whitelist. Everything already protected automatically (see below) needs no extra action from you.

5. Clean in one click

   Run the cleanup with a single click. Protected mail is skipped automatically; everything else follows the Trash-or-permanent-delete choice covered below.

6. Optionally stop future clutter

   Add the Stop Ads add-on to auto-unsubscribe from newsletters Clean Email can reach and archive future mail from those senders, so the same clutter doesn't build back up.

The four stages, in plain terms

Cleaning a Gmail inbox with Clean Email always follows the same order: sign in, scan, choose and protect, then clean. Each stage is a separate, visible step — there is no hidden stage where mail gets deleted without your say-so.

The scan stage is purely informational. It tells you how many emails and how much space a cleanup would affect, so you can decide before anything is touched.

• Sign in with Google — secure OAuth connection, no password shared with Clean Email
• Scan — counts emails and storage that could be freed, deletes nothing
• Choose and protect — review your results, add senders to keep to the protected list
• Clean — run the cleanup, with Trash as the default and permanent delete as an explicit opt-in

What's protected automatically vs. what you protect yourself

Some protections apply with zero setup, because they're built into how Clean Email builds its search. Others — like keeping mail from one specific sender — are up to you to add.

Protection is checked twice: once to narrow the search up front, and again message-by-message right before deletion, so it holds even if a search shortcut behaves unexpectedly.

Trash by default, permanent delete only if you choose it

By default, a cleanup moves everything except protected mail to Gmail's own Trash folder — the same place Gmail's own delete button sends mail. It stays there and is recoverable for 30 days, just like any normal Gmail deletion.

Permanent deletion is available separately as an explicit opt-in. It is irreversible and uses the Gmail API's permanent-delete capability rather than the Trash-based move. Clean Email never deletes attachments on their own — a message carrying an attachment is protected outright unless you explicitly remove that protection.

Why sign-in uses a broad Gmail permission

The Google sign-in screen requests full Gmail access. That broader scope is required because permanent deletion (the Gmail API's batch-delete capability) isn't possible under Gmail's narrower modify-only scope, which only allows moving mail to Trash.

Even with that access granted, Clean Email's own code only ever reads message metadata — sender, labels, size, thread id — to build the counts you see. It does not fetch, store, or display the content of your emails.

You can review or revoke this access at any time from your Google Account permissions page, separately from disconnecting inside Clean Email itself.

FAQ

Does anything get deleted before I confirm?

No. Signing in and scanning only count how many emails and how much storage a cleanup would affect — nothing is moved or deleted until you review the results and explicitly run the cleanup.

What happens to my emails when I run a cleanup?

By default, everything except protected mail moves to Gmail Trash, where it stays recoverable for 30 days, exactly like a normal Gmail delete. Permanent deletion is a separate, explicit opt-in and is irreversible.

Which emails are automatically safe from deletion?

Starred messages, messages marked important, messages with any user-created label, two-way conversations, messages with any attachment, sent mail, drafts, scheduled sends, snoozed mail, and chats are all protected automatically — no setup required.

How do I keep emails from a specific sender?

Add that sender's exact email address, or their entire domain, to the protected whitelist before running a cleanup. Whitelisted senders are never deleted.

Does Clean Email work with Outlook, Yahoo Mail, or iCloud Mail?

No. Clean Email only supports Gmail — both personal @gmail.com accounts and Google Workspace accounts. It does not work with Outlook, Yahoo Mail, iCloud Mail, or other IMAP inboxes.

Does Clean Email read the content of my emails?

No. Clean Email only reads message metadata (sender, labels, size, thread id) to build counts. It never reads, stores, or displays the actual content of your emails.