Scheduled Gmail cleanup - auto-delete spam, promotions, social & trash

Scheduled Gmail Cleanup – Auto-Delete Spam, Promotions, Social & Trash to save the Gmail space and time

Managing Gmail manually can be tedious and time-consuming. Spam, Promotions, Social, and Trash folders quickly fill up with unwanted emails, taking up valuable storage and creating clutter. This workflow provides a simple yet powerful Gmail automation for efficient email management, helping you maintain a cleaner inbox with zero daily effort.

This workflow is triggered by a Schedule node that runs once per day (customizable). It then uses multiple Gmail nodes to:

1. Fetch Spam Emails – Identify all emails in the Spam folder.
2. Fetch Promotions Emails – Collect promotional messages from Gmail’s Promotions category.
3. Fetch Social Emails – Pull emails from the Social tab.
4. Fetch Trash Emails – Find all items already marked as trash.
5. Delete Fetched Emails – Automatically delete the emails retrieved from these categories.

By default, the workflow deletes the selected emails permanently. Once removed, they are not recoverable.

Key Benefits

• Automatically deletes junk, spam, and promotional emails daily
• Keeps Gmail storage under control and prevents hitting Google’s limits
• Saves time by eliminating manual cleanup tasks
• Helps you achieve and maintain Inbox Zero
• Simple “set and forget” automation — once activated, it runs in the background

How to Use

1. Import this workflow into your n8n account.
2. Connect your Gmail account using Gmail OAuth2 credentials.
3. Open each Gmail node and select your Gmail credential.
4. Adjust the Schedule Trigger if you want to run it more or less frequently (default: once per day).
5. Save and activate the workflow.

Once set up, your Gmail inbox will automatically stay clean and organized every day.

Who Is This For?

• Professionals who want to focus only on important emails
• Productivity enthusiasts striving for Inbox Zero
• Users approaching Gmail’s 15GB storage limit
• Teams managing shared inboxes with heavy email flow

Customising this workflow

• Schedule: Adjust the Schedule Trigger to run hourly, daily, or weekly.
• Categories: Remove nodes for folders you want to keep, or add filters to only delete emails older than a certain number of days.
• Deletion Settings: Modify the Gmail Delete node to move emails to Trash instead of permanent deletion if you prefer a safer cleanup.