Labels make it easy to categorize your emails in Gmail, which helps save time when you are looking for a specific mail. However, Google already provides a few labels by default, and if you choose to create additional ones, it can sometimes result in too many labels. This can make your Gmail feel cluttered and even make it harder to find what you are looking for. Fortunately, it is quite easy to delete labels in Gmail, and here is how you can do so on different platforms.

On Desktop

To delete a label in Gmail on your desktop,

  1. Open Gmail in a web browser and you will see all your labels on the left side under the 'Labels' heading.
  2. Hover your mouse cursor over a label and click on the three dots that appear.
  1. Now click on the 'Remove label' option to remove it. Deleting a label will not delete your emails.
  1. To delete multiple labels, click on the gear icon at the top right and then on 'See all settings'.
  1. Click on the 'Labels' heading and then scroll down to the Labels section.
  1. Now you can click on the 'Remove' option next to all the labels you want to remove.

On iPad and iPhone

To delete Gmail labels on your iPad or iPhone,

  1. Open Gmail and tap on the hamburger menu which appears as a set of three horizontal lines on the top left.
  2. Then tap on 'Settings' in the dropdown menu.
  1. When the Settings page opens, tap on 'Inbox customizations' under the 'Inbox' section.
  2. Then tap on 'Labels' below 'Inbox tips' to see all your Gmail labels.
  1. Tap on the name of the label you want to delete.
  2. Finally, tap on 'Delete [label name]' at the bottom of the page and confirm your action.

Things to know

  • While you cannot delete emails directly in Android using the Gmail app, you can do so by accessing Gmail with a web browser.
  • If you accidentally remove a label that you did not want to, you can recreate that label and assign it to the required emails.
  • In case you do not want to delete a label but have no use for it currently, you can choose to hide it by clicking on the three dots next to it and choosing the 'hide' option.
  • While removing a label does not delete your emails under that label, you can delete all the emails under a label by selecting them and clicking on the trash icon.