Your iCloud Mail mailbox can quickly fill up with old advertisements, newsletters, and junk messages that take up unnecessary storage space. Fortunately, with iCloud Mail Cleanup, Apple offers a smart solution to automatically clean your Incoming folder, directly through iCloud.com. This handy feature detects and removes junk, such as outdated promotions, and even helps you unsubscribe from various mailing lists in bulk.
The cleaning recommendations apply to all your devices where iCloud Mail is enabled, and you maintain full control over what happens to your emails. The cleanup feature is hidden in the iCloud settings and can only be accessed through the iCloud website. In this article we explain how to activate and use this hidden function, with a handy step-by-step plan.
Cleanup feature for iCloud Mail
Via the iCloud website you have the option to clean, organize and free up space in your ‘Incoming’ folder in Mail. This can be done by deleting old advertising messages, unsubscribing from mailing lists in bulk and more. When you set iCloud Mail Cleanup recommendations, they are applied to all devices that use iCloud Mail.
iCloud Mail Cleanup scans your Incoming folder and makes suggestions, such as deleting old promotional emails, archiving transactions, or unsubscribing from senders in categories like “Ads” and “Updates.” You can set rules for actions (such as delete or archive), status (unread or read), and age of messages. Future messages from unsubscribed senders will automatically be placed in the Trash.
Set up mail cleaning
- Go to icloud.com/mail
- Log in with your Apple Account
- At the bottom of the mailbox list, select “iCloud Mail Cleanup”
- Click ‘Get Recommendations’ then ‘Done’
- Your Incoming folder will now be scanned
Don’t see the ‘iCloud Mail Cleanup’ option? Then you can also open it manually via gear ▸ Settings ▸ Cleanup
Use cleanup
Once you activate the option, you can view the various recommendations and delete unwanted emails or unsubscribe from newsletters and so on.
- Go to icloud.com/mail
- Log in with your Apple Account
- Click the gear in the Mail sidebar
- Choose ‘Settings’
- Open ‘CleanUp’
- Choose a desired recommendation
For example, you can unsubscribe from certain senders of newsletters that you rarely open, clean up old advertisements and updates, and archive old transactions. This way you automatically keep your mailbox tidy and save data.
Adjust rules
When you open a recommendation, you will see rules that you can adjust at any time. This way you can select the desired action, status and period when clearing old advertising. This makes it possible to automatically move advertising to the trash after a year. You have control over when and how often the content is cleaned up.
Via the iCloud website you can view all found messages one by one from the recommendations; This gives you insight into which email messages are deleted, so that you can manually save them. Basically, Mail is supposed to clean up your inbox automatically.
Disable cleanup
Go to icloud.com/mail and log in with your Apple account. Click on it gear in the Mail sidebar, select ‘Institutions‘ and go to ‘Cleanup‘. Then choose ‘Disable iCloud Mail Cleanup‘ to deactivate the automatic cleaning of your inbox.