Manage Email Subscriptions on Gmail With A New Feature!

On July 8th, 2025, Google rolled out an interesting update on how to manage email subscriptions on Gmail. This new command center is the place to stop the unread newsletters from coming in. Put a pause on all those countless social media posts and never-to-be-seen product updates from infiltrating your personal email space.

Just go through this guide and see how easy it is to check and cancel Gmail email subscriptions.

Introducing A New Way to Manage Subscriptions in Gmail

For Gmail web users:

Step 1. Log in to Gmail.

Step 2. Under the Main Menu pane, expand More

Step 3. You should see a new “Manage subscriptions” option; click on it.

Or use this shortcut link to manage subscriptions: https://mail.google.com/mail/u/1/#sub

Note, you must be prelogged in on the browser; otherwise, after a new sign-in, by default, you will be in your inbox.

For Mobile (Both Android and iOS):

Step 1. Open the Gmail app.

Step 2. Tap on the hamburger menu (☰) at the top right corner of your screen.

Step 3. Tap “Manage subscriptions.”

Note: It is possible that when you try these steps on your mobile, you won’t see the Manage subscriptions option. Don’t worry, this is happening because the Manage subscription in Gmail feature is in a gradual rollout stage, so although some users/platforms have received this update, others have yet to see the new feature.

Check the Play Store (or App Store if you use an iOS device) to see if there is a pending update for the Gmail app. Also, check if your mobile itself is up to date.

What does Manage Subscriptions in Gmail Look Like?

If you are someone who is yet to receive the update and is curious what this actually looks like, don’t fret, you may try signing out of Gmail and signing back in to see if it unlocks the feature.  Here is a brief description of each and every UI element in great detail.

When you open the Manage Subscriptions screen, the first thing you notice is that all the email senders are neatly arranged in the form of a table.

Every unique sender has its details in a separate row, and there are four different columns. The first one is the sender’s name, then there is the sender’s email address.

The third column gives you a rough count of the number of emails sent by them to you “Recently”. Based on my findings, Gmail classifies any email that came in the last 3 weeks as recent.

At last, the 4th column contains the unsubscribe button. However, what’s surprising is the lack of column headers. Also, there is no way to hide existing columns or add new ones.

Use Manage Subscriptions in Gmail to Rapidly Unsubscribe

Just follow these steps:

Step 1. Click on Unsubscribe (it highlights with a light grey halo when you put your cursor on it)

Step 2. Confirm that you are Unsubscribing by clicking the blue Unsubscribe button in the pop-up window.

Step 3. Cross the little black confirmation alert that appears at the bottom left corner. (If you do nothing, it will vanish on its own after a few seconds)

Step 4. Repeat Steps 1 through 3 for every other newsletter, social media update, etc, you don’t want inside your inbox.

This was the basic method to deal with unwanted spam. However, how do you decide which email sender to unsubscribe from and which ones to keep? The limited Manage Subscriptions UI doesn’t show you which ones you actively read and which just sit in your inbox. Don’t worry, I have come up with a way to make this choice super easy.

Smart Strategy to Manage Email Subscriptions on Gmail

Most users who fail to resolve the Gmail is running out of space issue on their own do so because they dont unsubscribe from the emails that regularly fill up their email. So once you get to the Manage subscriptions, click on any of the sender rows. You will see that Gmail creates a complex search query like this:

“from:[email protected] (-label:spam OR label:trash) label:^sub_m”

Let me explain what each part means.

from:[email protected]

This part focuses Gmail’s search on only those emails that were sent from this sender.

-label:spam OR label:trash

This part of the search query tells Gmail not to search for emails that are either in Spam or the Trash folder. The hyphen “-” acts as our negation.

label:^sub_m

This is the brand new internal system label, which identifies all the subscription-type emails (likely with the help of email header data).

Now the best aprt is that the search query is not stagnant or fixed, which means we can make our adjustments and modify it. So append the is:read parameter at the end. Your query should become something like:

from:[email protected] (-label:spam OR label:trash) label:^sub_m is:read

Note down the number of emails here that remain after changing the filter.

Then, change the flag again, this time add is:unread, and press enter, and note the number of results again.

from:[email protected] (-label:spam OR label:trash) label:^sub_m is:unread

See which filter contains more results. If you read most of the emails, you should not unsubscribe. Otherwise, if most emails are left unread, then there should be no problems unsubscribing.

Despite all these advantages, there are still a few problems with this way of handling email subscriptions on Gmail.

Current Limitations of the Manage Subscriptions Portal in Gmail

Adding this feature is a step in the right direction when it comes to reducing email spam, but there is still some scope for improvement:

• You dont get the option to select multiple items and unsubscribe all of them together. Although the entire list of email subscriptions is visible at a single location still have to unsubscribe one by one. There is no unsubscribe all button that does it in one shot.
• Unsubscribing does not clean your mailbox; every email you ever received prior to hitting the unsubscribe button is still in your inbox, occupying storage. Those emails won’t magically disappear; you have to delete them on your own.
• Unsubscribing via the Manage Subscriptions area does not happen in real time. It can take “some time” for your unsubscription request to propagate to the sender (CAN-SPAM Act mandates that any unsubscribing request must be done within 10 days of the request). So don’t be surprised if you see a new email appear just after you hit unsubscribe.
• There is no undo option to reverse a subscription request made by mistake. So if you want to resubscribe, you must visit the sender’s website and make a new request.
• Manage Subscriptions option is put below the main fold of Gmail’s menu pane with no way to bring it to prominence. This is because Manage Subscriptions is not your typical Gmail label but a complex filter of sorts.

Conclusion

Here we told you how to manage email subscriptions on Gmail after the new update. Not only that, but we also helped you decide which email subscriptions are safe to unsubscribe from. Plus, we also gave users a precise value for vague terms they see inside the new Manage subscription area, and gave a list of improvements users would like to see in the future.

What Google Workspace admins must do:

Suppose you are an administrator in an organization. In that case, you must take a proactive approach to ensure that users don’t unsubscribe from critical internal communications and prepare for instances where they do.

You can’t outwrite pause/ takeaway a user’s ability to unsubscribe, as this is a built-in feature within the Gmail app. Instead, release a company-wide memo highlighting the use cases and warning against accidental unsubscribing from official messages.

After unsubscribing, users may try to clear out the already existing mail, too.  Deploy the SysTools Google Workspace Backup and Restore wizard in your organization. And prepare a safe copy of the existing emails before permanent deletion makes recovery impossible.