Block in Gmail does not do what the word suggests. It does not bounce the sender, stop their mail reaching you or tell them anything has changed. All it does is quietly route their future emails into your Spam folder instead of your inbox. The messages still arrive in your account. You just stop seeing them up front.
It is still useful for a persistent nuisance, since it takes seconds to set up. It just helps to know the limits going in. A blocked sender is never notified, can still reach you from any other address and gets blocked one address at a time. This guide shows how to block and unblock on desktop and phone, what blocking really does, plus the stronger native moves for when Spam is not enough.
Block a sender on desktop
You block from inside one of their emails, not from a settings page.
- Open Gmail, then open a message from the sender.
- At the top right of that message, next to Reply, click the three dot More menu.
- Click Block, followed by the sender's name.
- Confirm Block in the small window that appears.
From then on their mail skips your inbox and lands in Spam. Google sets out the same steps in its help on blocking a sender.
Block on your phone
The Gmail app works the same way. A block set on the phone applies to your account everywhere.
- Open the Gmail app, then open a message from the sender.
- Tap the three dot More menu at the top right of the message.
- Tap Block, then the sender's name.
One gap to note: the mobile apps do not show your full list of blocked senders. You can block or unblock from an individual email, but to see and manage the whole list you need Gmail on a computer. The desktop site in a phone browser works too.
Block without opening the email
If you would rather not open a suspicious message, you have two no-open routes. From the inbox list, hover over the email, tick the checkbox on the left, then use the three dot menu that appears above the list to Block the sender. Or skip the block entirely and build a filter on the address, which never needs the message opened at all. The filter route is also the only way to block before a first email even arrives, if you already know the address.
Unblock a sender
There are two ways to reverse a block. The quick one is to open any email from that sender, click the three dot menu and choose Unblock. The reliable one uses settings, which matters because a blocked sender's mail in Spam is auto-deleted after 30 days, so you may have no email left to open.
- Open Settings, then click See all settings.
- Open the Filters and Blocked Addresses tab.
- Scroll to the list of blocked addresses at the bottom.
- Tick the sender, then click Unblock selected addresses.
Their future mail returns to your inbox. Unblocking is silent too. It does not bring back anything already deleted from Spam.
What blocking really does
Because block is just a Spam redirect, a few things are worth being clear about before you rely on it.
- The sender is not told. From their side nothing changes. There is no bounce, no notice and no read receipt.
- It is one address at a time. Block someone and they can simply write from a different address. There is no built in way to block a whole person, only specific addresses.
- Past emails stay put. Blocking only affects future mail. Anything already in your inbox stays until you delete it.
- It does not unsubscribe you. Block a newsletter and you still get every issue, just in Spam. Unsubscribing is the cleaner fix for marketing mail.
- You can still email them. The block is one way. You can message a blocked sender, but their reply lands in your Spam.
Stronger moves when Spam is not enough
If shelving mail in Spam does not cut it, two native options go further. Both use filters, which you set up on the web.
To make a sender's mail delete itself rather than sit in Spam, build a filter on their address and set the action to Delete it. Every future message from them then goes straight to Trash. This is the same filter approach in our guide on auto-deleting old emails in Gmail. To stop a sender who keeps switching addresses within one company, filter on the whole domain instead, by entering the part after the at sign in the From field. That catches every address on that domain at once, which the plain Block button cannot do. Google explains the filter actions in its filter help.
Block, report or unsubscribe?
Block is one of four tools for unwanted mail. The right one depends on the sender.
| Tool | Use it when |
|---|---|
| Block | The sender is a known nuisance but not dangerous. Their mail goes to Spam, silently. |
| Report spam | You want it in Spam and you want to teach Gmail. Reporting trains the filter for everyone. |
| Report phishing | The email looks like a scam or an attempt to steal your details. This flags it as dangerous. |
| Unsubscribe | It is legitimate marketing you once signed up for. This removes you from the list at the source. |
For a newsletter or promotion, unsubscribe beats block, since it stops the mail being sent at all rather than just hiding it. For a genuine bad actor, report spam or phishing does more than a quiet block, because it helps Gmail protect other people too.
The other blocked list you forgot
One thing trips people up when a blocked sender still gets through. Gmail's block list, under Filters and Blocked Addresses, is separate from a second list on your Google Account, found under your profile at People and sharing, then Blocked. They do not share entries. If a sender is not in the Gmail list, check the account level one. If you run more than one Google account, note each keeps its own blocked list, which our guide on managing multiple Gmail accounts covers.
