The mobile app for Google’s service may be set to automatically archive messages you’ve swiped past, but you can change the setting.
A. The Gmail app for Android gives its users two choices for discarding a new message: archive or delete.
The Archive action removes the message from view in the inbox and puts it in the All Mail area, in case you ever need it again. You can find archived messages by using Gmail’s search function. Messages addressed to a group of people can return to your inbox if someone on the address list replies to the original.
The Delete action moves the selected message to the Trash area, where it stays for 30 days before it is permanently deleted. If you do not want to wait that long to dump your mail trash, tap the three-lined menu icon in the top-left corner of the Gmail app, select the Trash icon on the left and tap the Empty Trash Now button at the top of the mailbox window.
To make the Gmail app delete unwanted messages instead of archiving them when you swipe the screen, tap the Menu icon again, scroll down the left pane of the window, select Settings and choose General Settings on the next screen. Tap “Gmail default action” and select “Delete” instead of “Archive.” If you want to be warned when deleting messages, select “Confirm before deleting” on the General Settings screen.
The steps for changing the setting in the Gmail app for iOS are similar. On the Settings screen, tap your account name, go to the General area, select “When removing messages, I prefer to” and choose “Move to trash.” (If you download mail from your Gmail account through the standard iOS mail app, you can also choose between archive and delete in the account settings.)
As for messages that were archived instead of deleted, you can find them by opening the Menu icon and selecting All Mail. Here, you can swipe each message to delete it. If you want to dig up messages from certain people or on specific topics you no longer care about, you can use search operators to round up mail that matches very specific criteria. For example, the search string “-in:inbox -has:userlabel” seeks out messages that are not in your inbox and do not have any custom labels you may have used to sort your incoming mail.
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