The average email inbox can easily become packed with so many unwanted messages… not necessarily spam, per se, but threads and feeds you’re just no longer interested in. Fortunately, there are capabilities baked into Gmail and Microsoft Outlook alike that allow you to remove these messages from your concern.

Let’s go through how to conveniently unsubscribe from emails (and when you may want to do something else).

Unsubscribing from Email Lists from Within Your Email Client

Gmail

In Gmail, select More in the left-side panel menu, and then click into Manage subscriptions. You’ll be presented with a collection of all the email lists you’re subscribed to, with the easy option to Unsubscribe on the right. Click Confirm, and you’re done!

Outlook

In Outlook, click into your Settings and select Mail. You should then choose Subscriptions. There, you’ll see all the email lists you are currently a part of, with the option to Unsubscribe. Click that, then confirm your choice.

Be Careful With Things You Never Subscribed To!

Let’s say you’re reviewing your email, and you see an email that you know you didn’t subscribe to. There’s a chance that clicking unsubscribe could be risky. Here’s why:

By engaging with the email—yes, even to unsubscribe—you are confirming to the sender that your email address is actively used and that you may respond. That’s all the confirmation they need to add your email to a big list of working emails that they can then sell… ultimately exacerbating your problem. Instead, simply mark it as spam and delete it, ideally without even opening it.

Hopefully, this helps you keep your inbox that much cleaner and that much more secure!