Apple's Mail app offers little control over how much storage it uses. It's designed to download and store large numbers of emails so they can be indexed and searched via Spotlight. On iOS, the Mail app can take up gigabytes of storage space by keeping a complete offline copy of your emails. That's why it might be worth knowing how to free up space in Mail on iPhone or iPad.
Find out how much space Mail is using
You can check the storage space used by the Mail app on your iPhone or iPad in the same way as for any other app:
- Open the Settings app on your device
- then go to General > iPhone Storage
- Scroll down the list of apps and find the Mail app
Here you will be able to see the space used by "Mail" for all your messages and their attachments.
By clicking on it, you will even see the weight of the application itself and the weight of the documents and data stored in the app.
The Wrong Way to Free Up Space on Mail on iPhone: Manually Deleting Your Emails
If you're feeling like doing something daunting, you can delete emails manually. Just open the Mail app and start deleting. delete emails, especially those with attachments. Select the emails, press “Move” and transfer them to the Trash. Remember to empty the Trash afterwards.
To find emails with attachments, go to your inbox, then tap the three-line button at the bottom left of the screen, and then tap "Filter by" at the bottom center of the screen.
Enable the “With attachments” option to only display your emails containing an attachment.
However, This is probably a solution you'd rather avoid. ! Emails you delete from your phone will also be deleted from the server if you use IMAP for your emails, which is very likely. Even without that, the process is long and tedious. Also, it is not possible to delete an attachment from an email without deleting the entire email.
A better solution: remove and re-add your email account
Fortunately, there is a more effective, albeit somewhat unorthodox, solution to freeing up space in your iPhone's mail. You can force the Mail app on your iPhone or iPad to start over and get rid of all offline copies of your emails by deleting your current email accounts and adding them back.
Assuming you are using IMAP or Exchange for your emails, you won't lose any emails by doing this. They will remain stored on your email provider's server, and you can access them by logging in from the web. However, if you're using the older POP3 protocol, these emails may only be stored on your device. Unless otherwise specified, you're probably using IMAP or Exchange.
For it :
- open the Settings app
- scroll down to Mail > Accounts
- select the email account you want to delete
- Once the account is selected, click on “Delete account” at the bottom of the screen
Next, turn your iPhone or iPad off and on again to ensure all offline caches are completely cleared. Open the Mail app and you will be asked to enter your email account details again.
Your iPhone will then start downloading emails again, but this will clear out the old stock of emails and attachments that have accumulated.
Limit the number of emails forwarded to Mail by your email provider
The above tips may not be enough to reduce the space taken up by the Mail app in the long run. There is a way to limit the number of emails downloaded by the Mail app. Unfortunately, the Mail app itself does not offer this option.
Some email providers offer an option to limit the number of emails made available to IMAP clients like the Mail app.
For example, with Gmail:
- Log in to your account gmail on your computer
- open the Settings page
- click on “Forwarding and POP/IMAP”
- find the option " Folder size limits » and choose “Limit the number of messages in IMAP folders to the specified value”.
- set its value to "1000" for example and the Mail app will not be able to download more than 1000 messages for each folder.
Other email services may offer similar options. Explore their settings pages on the web to learn more.
To clear your download cache, you will need to remove and re-add the email account on your iPhone after changing this setting.
Switch to another email app instead of Mail
Unfortunately, the Mail app can be difficult to manage. It might end up taking up a lot of storage space again after you remove and re-add accounts. Not all email services allow you to limit the number of emails displayed to the Mail app.
Apple hasn't provided any options to control how much storage the Mail app uses. However, you can always opt for a different email app. For example, if you use Gmail, install Google's Gmail app from the App Store. If you use Microsoft's Outlook.com, then download the Outlook app for iOS. These apps typically don't attempt to cache a large number of emails offline, so they'll use less storage space.
After you have set up your new email application, you can delete your accounts emails from the Mail app integrated by following the instructions above, and it will no longer download emails or use space.
Remove the Mail app entirely
If you want to eliminate all data from the Mail app, you can always take the drastic option: delete the app entirely. You can always reinstall the Mail app from the App Store if necessary, and deleting it won't delete any emails from the server. To access it again, simply re-download the app and log in or access your emails through your browser.
To completely remove the Mail app, go to Settings > General > iPhone Storage > Mail, then tap the “Delete App” button.
Unfortunately, Apple's Mail app, whether on mobile devices or Macs, doesn't offer much control over how much storage it uses. While phone storage isn't as limited as it used to be, it's still frustrating to waste a few gigabytes on emails you probably don't need or want to keep locally.
