Inbox Zero for Devs: How I Built a JavaScript Script to Destroy Gmail Spam

Hey dev community! 👋 As developers, our inboxes often turn into a graveyard of job alerts (LinkedIn, Indeed, ZipRecruiter) and tech newsletters we subscribe to with the intention of "reading later" but never actually open. The result? Important emails get lost, and we get the dreaded "Account storage is almost full" notification. Recently, I hit that wall. I had thousands of accumulated emails. While Gmail allows you to create filters for incoming mail, it doesn't have a native feature to say: "Delete this email automatically after 7 days" . So, I decided to solve it the way we solve everything: by writing some code. 🛠️ The Solution: Google Apps Script + JavaScript Since the Google Workspace ecosystem runs on a JavaScript-based environment, I put together a custom script. Fun fact: a simple loop originally failed due to Google's strict 6-minute execution limit. To fix this, I optimized the code to process emails in batches of 100 , preventing the server from timing out. Here is the final production-ready script: function cleanSpamTsunami() { // 1. Loop to delete ALL Job Board emails in batches of 100 var continueJobSearch = true; while (continueJobSearch) { var jobThreads = GmailApp.search('computrabajo OR indeed OR linkedin OR OCC OR neuvoo OR talent.com OR jooble', 0, 100); if (jobThreads.length > 0) { Logger.log('Deleting a batch of ' + jobThreads.length + ' job alert emails...'); GmailApp.moveThreadsToTrash(jobThreads); } else { Logger.log('No more job alerts found!'); continueJobSearch = false; // Break the loop } } // 2. Loop to delete old Newsletters (older than 7 days) in batches of 100 var continueNewsletters = true; while (continueNewsletters) { var newsletterThreads = GmailApp.search('unsubscribe OR "cancelar suscripción" older_than:7d', 0, 100); if (newsletterThreads.length > 0) { Logger.log('Deleting a batch of ' + newsletterThreads.length + ' old newsletters...'); GmailApp.moveThreadsToTrash(newsletterThreads); } else { Logger.log('No more old newslett