How to stop promotional emails in Gmail, and keep the ones you want

To stop promotional emails in Gmail, unsubscribe from the senders you no longer read, let the Promotions tab catch the rest, and add a filter for the few stores that keep mailing anyway. That takes about twenty minutes and costs nothing. The harder part is that new stores, apps and event sites find you every week, and each one starts with a fresh promotion.

"Stop" can mean three different things, and each has its own fix:

Most people need all three. This guide goes through them in that order, then explains what to do about the senders that keep coming back.

Unsubscribe, the right way

For a store, an app or a newsletter you once signed up for, unsubscribing is the cleanest fix, because the mail stops at the source. Gmail makes it easy:

• The Unsubscribe link next to the sender name. Open a promotional email and look at the top, beside the sender's name. Gmail shows an "Unsubscribe" link there for most bulk mail. Click it and confirm. Since 2024, Google has required anyone sending more than 5,000 messages a day to Gmail addresses to offer this one-click unsubscribe and to honour it within two days.
• Manage subscriptions. Gmail now has a page that lists the senders you are subscribed to, ordered by how much they send, with an Unsubscribe button next to each. On a computer, open the menu on the left and choose "Manage subscriptions" (you may need to click "More" first). In the Gmail app, it is in the menu at the top left. Start with the senders at the top: they are most of the volume.

Two cautions. Never click "unsubscribe" inside a message that looks like a scam: it only tells the sender your address is read, so report it as spam instead. And give it a couple of days before you judge: mail already queued may still arrive.

Let the Promotions tab do the sorting

Gmail's default inbox splits mail into tabs: Primary, Promotions, Social, Updates and Forums. With the Promotions tab on, most marketing mail never reaches Primary, which is the view you actually read.

To check that it is on, click the gear icon at the top right, then "See all settings", open the "Inbox" tab and look at "Categories". Tick "Promotions" (and "Social", if notifications from social networks bother you too), then save. The inbox type must be "Default" for the tabs to show.

If a promotion lands in Primary, drag it onto the Promotions tab. Gmail asks whether to do the same for future messages from that sender. Say yes, and that sender is sorted for good.

A common mistake: some guides tell you to switch the Promotions tab off to stop promotions. That does the opposite. With the tab off, every promotion goes back into your main inbox.

Add filters for the senders that keep coming

Some senders ignore unsubscribes, and some you want to hear from, just not loudly. Filters handle both. In the search bar, click the sliders icon, describe the mail, and click "Create filter". Useful ones:

• from:(@news.examplestore.com) catches one store's marketing domain while its receipts, which usually come from another address, still reach you.
• category:promotions in "Has the words", with "Mark as read", stops the Promotions tab from showing an unread count at all.
• unsubscribe -from:(me) in "Has the words" catches most bulk mail, promotions included, because almost all of it contains that word.

A filter only acts on mail as it arrives. To apply it to the mail already there, tick the checkbox that also applies the filter to the matching conversations, just before you click "Create filter". And a filter is literal: it does exactly what the words say, so check the search results before you click "Create filter", and choose archive or mark as read over delete until you have seen what it catches.

Block the senders that ignore you

If a sender keeps writing after you unsubscribed, open one of their messages, click the three dots next to Reply, and choose "Block". Their future mail goes straight to Spam. If you never signed up in the first place, click "Report spam" instead, so Gmail learns from it.

Blocking works one address at a time. It is the right tool for a single stubborn sender, and the wrong one for a flood.

Stop the notifications on your phone

Even sorted mail can buzz your phone. With tabs on, the Gmail app notifies you only about mail in Primary by default, so promotions in their own tab already arrive without a sound. To be pinged even less, open the app's menu, then Settings, pick your account if you have several, tap "Email notifications" and choose "High priority only". This works the same on iPhone and Android.

Clear the promotions you already have

New rules do not touch the pile that is already there. To clear it, search for category:promotions, select all, click "Select all conversations that match this search" and delete or archive them. The guide to deleting all unread emails in Gmail at once walks through this step by step, with the searches that keep receipts and starred mail safe.

Why the promotions keep coming back

If you do everything above, the inbox gets quiet. Then, slowly, it gets loud again. Three reasons:

• Every purchase is a new sender. Each store you buy from, each app you try and each event you register for adds itself to your inbox, usually with marketing on by default.
• Filters know addresses and words, not meaning. You cannot write a filter for "promotions from my airline, but never the booking confirmations", because both come from the same company and often share words.
• Gmail treats this mail as legitimate. It is. That is why the spam filter lets it through, as the guide on why the Gmail spam filter seems not to be working explains.

For most people the free steps are enough for months. When they are not, the missing piece is a filter that understands what a message is about.

Rules in plain words, for the ones that slip through

That is what I built QuietMail for. It is an AI anti-spam that sits on top of Gmail. You switch on the preset "Ads & sales pitches", which is on by default, and add rules in your own words, such as "promotions from stores, but keep anything about an order I placed" or "travel deals, except from my airline". An AI model reads a copy of each new message, in every tab, and answers one question: is this noise under your rules? If it is, plain code does the one thing you chose: mark it as read, move it to Spam or move it to Trash. The default is mark as read, so nothing leaves your inbox unless you ask for it.

A few things that matter here:

• A new store is caught on its first email. A rule about meaning does not need the sender's address.
• Receipts are a separate choice. Order confirmations and shipping updates have their own presets, off by default, so "no promotions" does not quietly swallow the email about your parcel.
• You can see every decision. The activity log shows each message QuietMail acted on, the reason, and an Undo that puts it back.
• The AI cannot touch your mailbox. It has no tools and returns nothing but its judgment. The Security page explains what the app can and cannot do.

If you are comparing tools, the most common alternative is SaneBox, which learns from what you open and moves the rest into a folder to read later. The SaneBox alternative page sets the two side by side, including where SaneBox is the better pick.

QuietMail works with Gmail and Google Workspace, Outlook.com and Hotmail, and Zoho Mail. The free plan covers one inbox with no card and 80 AI calls a month, and paid plans start at $4.99 a month with no monthly cap.

Quick answers

How do I stop promotional emails in the Gmail app? Use "Manage subscriptions" from the app's menu to unsubscribe, and keep notifications to Primary, the default, or set them to "High priority only". Filters can only be created on a computer or in a browser, but once made they work in the app too.

How do I stop promotional and social emails at once? Turn on both the Promotions and the Social tabs, then use Manage subscriptions for both kinds of sender. A filter on category:social handles the rest of the social notifications.

Does unsubscribing in Gmail actually work? For legitimate senders, yes. Large senders must honour it within two days. It does not work on scammers, who should be reported as spam instead.

Can I turn off the Promotions tab? You can, but the promotions then land in your main inbox. Keep the tab on and filter or unsubscribe instead.