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It’s always a good idea to delete emails that you no longer need — doing so will free up storage on your iPhone and make it run even smoother (and maybe even faster).
But you may be surprised to learn that simply deleting messages may not be enough to truly get rid of them.
This is the worst mistake you can make when deleting emails on your iPhone.
Plain and simple: the worst mistake you make when deleting emails on your iPhone is assuming they are gone for good.
Apple actually provides a service by retaining deleted emails in its trash folder and holding onto them, just in case you change your mind and feel you’ve made a mistake by deleting them. Unfortunately, this does nothing to help free up precious storage space on your phone.
According to Apple Toolbox, there are two steps you should take to get rid of emails completely and set your inbox back to 0 messages.
To delete messages:
Open Settings
Select Passwords & Accounts
Choose one of your email accounts from the list
Select the same email account again
Scroll to the bottom and tap Advanced
Under the heading Mailbox Behavior, select Archive Mailbox
Look for heading On the Server
Tap to checkmark All Mail from “On The Server.”
Press <Advanced in the upper-right corner to go to the previous screen and look for the heading Move Discarded Messages Into
Select Deleted Mailbox
Tap <Account in the upper-right corner to go back to the previous screen
Click Done in the upper-right corner to save these settings
Repeat for all your email accounts
Now, in order to set your iPhone mail so that the inbox shows zero messages, take the following steps:
Open the Mail app
Tap ‘Edit’ in the top right-hand corner
Select all of the emails you want to delete
You can only delete up to 150 emails at a time
After iOS deletes those emails, go to the trash and delete again
Repeat this process until all emails are completely gone
After you finish, restart your device!
It may feel like a hassle to permanently delete emails each time you want to get rid of one for good. But taking the time once in awhile to completely clear our your inbox frees up storage space, can make your phone run faster, and will save you from staring at a cluttered inbox.
