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Welcome to the InboxCleaner wiki!

What is InboxCleaner?

A Google Chrome extension that will:

1. Parse all emails in your Gmail inbox
2. Display a list of email addresses that you're subscribed to
3. Enable you to easily unsubscribe from and/or move all emails from that address to the trash, with one click of a button.

What problem does it solve?

I've used the same gmail account for years. After submitting many forms or registering many accounts, I've accumulated a lot of email subscriptions to services I am not interested in. I created this extension to help me clean it up automatically, so my inboxes only get emails about services that I actually use.

How does it accomplish its goals?

• InboxSDK: for selecting & injecting DOM elements into Gmail's UI to add custom Gmail-themed UI more seamlessly
• Gmail API: for fine-grain control over operations like email parsing, reading, deleting

What features are supported, or how do I use it?

As of 9/27/2023, InboxCleaner supports the following features:

• Sync Now: click this button to start parsing your mailbox for all email subscriptions since the last time you synced. (only tested with 3300 in my inbox, 2014 of which were subscriptions).
  • It cannot distinguish between google accounts.
    • One workaround is to uninstall the extension, navigate to chrome://identity-internals and revoke all identity tokens. Then, reinstall the extension and try to sync emails. It should prompt you for a specific gmail account.
    • Another workaround is to sign into a different Chrome profile, then install the extension there. That way, it'll use the Chrome profile's account.
• Reset: click this button to empty the browser's cached email subscriptions.
• Unsubscribe: click this to navigate to the url where you can submit the form to unsubscribe. If it does not appear, click the address and manually find the link to unsubscribe. See these reasons for why the unsubscribe link could not be extracted.
• Click the sender email address to search and view all threads that they've sent. Tends to also display emails that were not subscriptions.
  • It queries your Gmail mailbox for threads that contain "subscribe".
  • Venmo is one example where its emails are not subscriptions, but they do match the query because it contains the word "subscribe".
• Use the checkboxes and/or the trash icon to remove individual subscriptions.
• Trash X threads: click this button to delete all threads from this sender.
  • Note: I only tested by deleting 232 threads with 1 click, and it's possible that it takes 2-3 seconds to each time. I don't know what happens if you click this and other rows multiple times.

How can I manage new, incoming email subscriptions?

After using this extension to filter out and unsubscribe to all the emails, you probably don't need it anymore. You'll be able to manually manage future emails.

Follow the instructions below to automatically filter out emails that have subscriptions out of your inbox and into a category with a custom label. You can also customize this how you'd like, if you do want to keep some of your email subscriptions.

1. In Gmail, click the icon in the right of the search bar, and type in the unsubscribe for Gmail's filter "has the words". Then click Create filter.

2. You'll be asked to set some actions for when an email is received and matches your filter. I personally choose to archive it and apply a custom label Unsubscribe or Junk. Click Create filter to finalize it. You also have the option of selecting the last option Also apply filter to matching conversations. That way, you can select all emails with this label and mass-delete everything instead of using this extension.

3. Now, your actions will be applied to all future emails that match this filter. You can manage, edit, and delete this filter by going to the top right and clicking the Settings (gear icon), and following See all settings > Filters and Blocked Addresses.

What is not supported?

There's a list of emails I recorded back in 2021 (may not be reliable) whose links could not be used to unsubscribe from, or it "fails"...

• noreply-maps-timeline@google.com
• noreply@em.overwatchleague.com
• retail_survey@feedback-vanguard.com
• news@e.cottonon.com
• email@swagbucksemail.com
• newsletter@reliablerxpharmacyemail.com
• email@engage.windows.com
• fortnite@epicgames.com

Some emails have a non-standard text that contains the hyperlink for redirecting you for unsubscribing. This extension does not pick up on and extract them. Some example phrases are:

• Venmo emails have that word, but there's no link to unsubscribe. Says "You cannot unsubscribe from these emails".
• Vanguard has specific steps, with the phrase "To customize your preferences or unsubscribe from alerts, follow these steps"
• When the thread message is clipped, you need to navigate to the full page to find the unsubscribe link.
• Unsubscribe link appears in the header, titled Unsubscribe.
  • Sometimes, if clicked, it's not redirecting, but pops up: Are you sure you'd like to stop receiving similar messages from Verizon Fios? If so, you'll be taken to this link to unsubscribe.
• Unsubscribe link appears in the body of the thread message, in various phrases, with various href innerText.
  • "Click here to unsubscribe".
  • "Click here to unsubscribe".
  • "Click here to unsubscribe".
  • "Click here to unsubscribe".
  • "Unsubscribe from CARFAX Messages"
  • "Unsubscribe here"
  • Unsubscribe: https://www.lifetime.life/en/membership/unsubscribe.html
  • Unsubscribe from this campaign here
  • You can unsubscribe by clicking here
  • To unsubscribe, please click here

Major features missing:

• Storing and switching between separate google accounts, same Chrome profile.
• Testing compatibility with more than 3000 emails/ 2000 subscriptions in the inbox (query rate limiting).
• Testing compatibility with moving more than 212 threads to the trash at a time (request timeouts).
• Testing syncing from the first time to the second time, to see if it properly updates the subscriptions list.