How To Delete Mail App and Clear Mail Storage on Mac | iBeesoft

Mail is one of the essential parts of our daily routines. It is a key source of communication for both professional and personal applications. Any Mac user would tell you that they open their Mail app first thing every morning. At least, that would be the case for anyone who works in any professional environment. However, while it is certainly the most important application on your Mac, it can become a headache sometimes. Whether it is due to storage concerns or some other problem, knowing how to delete mail app on Mac is important.

In mild situations, simply knowing how to clear mail storage in Mac can also be enough, but not always. This knowledge can help you avoid bigger steps like changing hard disks or adding more storage just to meet your needs. Whether you want to know how to delete mail app on Mac or if you just want to know how to clear mail storage on Mac, this guide has all the answers you need. Keep reading to find out more.

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Part 1. How to Delete Mail App on Mac?

Part 2. How to Clear Mail Storage on Mac

Part 3. How to Recover Accidentally Deleted Mail Attachments

Part 4. How To Remove the Mail App from Mac – FAQs

Part 1. How to Delete Mail App on Mac?

This is a very drastic measure that you only need to take if you are unable to solve the problem through any other means. We are mentioning it earlier because a lot of users have tried to do everything in their power before turning to the internet for help. Thankfully, there are multiple ways that you can use to delete the Mail app from your Mac. However, before we move on to the steps involved in each of them, we must warn you that data loss can be irreversible. The best thing to do at this point is to make a backup of all your email data so that you can access it even if you lose it on your Mac. Let us talk about how to delete the mail app on Mac.

Method #1. Manual Method for Deleting Mail App on Mac

If you have the skills and the patience to do some technical work, this step is the cleanest way of deleting the mail app. However, it is also the most tedious and the average user may find it a bit daunting to go through. If you are still convinced that this is the method that you want to use how to delete the mail app on Mac, then follow these steps:

The first thing you need to do is disable the System Integrity Protection (SIP) mechanism. This is something that Apple has put in place to prevent the user from deleting system applications or making any other changes that could affect system performance. The steps you need to take to do that are as follows:

1. Enter Recovery Mode on your Mac. To do that, you need to click on the Apple logo on the top left and select the restart option. After that, immediately press and hold the Command and R keys until the screen shows a spinning globe or Apple logo. The spinning globe indicates that your Mac is starting up MacOS Recovery via the internet.
2. In the Recovery Mode, click on Utilities and then select the Terminal option.
3. In the Terminal window, write csrutil disable and press the Enter key.
4. The SIP mechanism should be disabled now, and you can restart your computer to continue.

The next step in how to remove mail app from Mac is performing the deletion through the following steps:

1. Sign in as the Administrator. This will give you full control of your system and make changes to the system itself.
2. Launch the Terminal app on your Mac again and in the window, write cd/Applications/ and press the Enter key. This will show you all the applications installed on your Mac. The mail app should also be shown in this list.
3. In the next line, write sudo rm –rf Mail.app/ and press the Enter key. You need to use the exact code for this to work so we recommend that you copy the above code and paste it directly into the Terminal window.

The Email app should be removed from your system after this.

Now that you know how to remove mail app from Mac, one thing that you should not forget is to re-enable SIP on your Mac. All you need to do is follow the same steps as described above but instead of writing csrutil disable, you will need to write csrutil enable and you should be done.

Method #2. How to Delete Mail App Using Third-Party Apps

If you want to learn how to delete mail app from Mac and the method is shown above intimidates you, you are not alone. Making changes in Terminal is not easy, especially if you do not understand the code you are executing. Thankfully, there are several tools for Mac that you can use to easily delete any app you want including Mail.

However, this easy method also comes with a warning. A lot of developers also use the opportunity to get access to your personal data and even install viruses that can end up costing you a lot of money later. To avoid that, look for good tools with plenty of good reviews available online. Tried and tested tools may not be free of cost, but they will at least save you from other bigger problems.

Part 2. How to Clear Mail Storage on Mac

Now that you have learned how to delete the mail app from Mac, let us talk about some less drastic steps to save your memory. It is not necessary that you delete the Mail app entirely. In case you only want to free up the storage or are moving to a different mail app, you can simply clear the storage that your mail app has been occupying. We are going to tell you exactly how to clear mail storage on Mac, so you do not need to depend on anyone else for such a simple task.

The obvious culprit when considering space consumption on the Mail app is the attachments. The text itself does not take any space whatsoever and you can have thousands of emails without worrying about space consumption. The attachments are the only thing hogging your storage; if you do not want to retain them, you can simply delete them from your system. There are two ways you can do that, and they are as follows:

The easier but longer method is to delete the attachments from the emails themselves. To do that, you can simply open the email that has an attachment with it and then click on the Menu button and select Remove Attachment. This will remove the local copy of the attachment from your Mac and that is one way how to delete Apple mail storage.

This may seem like a tedious job, especially if you have a lot of emails to go through. However, to make life easier, you can click on the View menu and then select the View by attachments option to bring all the emails with attachments to the top.

For people who are using Macs with macOS 12 Monterey or newer installed, Apple has given an additional feature for optimizing the storage used by mail attachments. You can click on the Apple logo on the top left of the screen and select the About this Mac option. In the window that opens, go to the Storage tab, and select the Manage option. In the sidebar on the left, select Mail and you should be able to see the space that attachments are occupying on your system. Here, you can select the attachments that you do not want and delete them directly from your Mac.

Part 3. How to Recover Accidentally Deleted Mail Attachments

While saving storage on your Mac is something that a lot of people want to do, not everyone wants to lose the attachments they have. Whether you accidentally delete attachments you need during the cleanup, or they got erased from your Mac some other way, you should also know how to get them back. now that you have learned how to delete Apple mail storage, we are sharing an easy method for recovering accidentally deleted attachments.

There are manual ways to do this, but we suggest using a good recovery tool like iBeesoft Data Recovery for Mac. This is a great software that does a lot of things for you while requiring minimal input from your end. Whether you lose your attachments through accidental deletion or other causes, it can easily find them for you. The entire process takes three simple steps, and you can recover deleted mails on Mac in no time. To find out how to use this tool, follow these simple steps:

1. Make sure iBeesoft free Mac data recovery software is installed and running on your Mac.
2. Click on the large Start button in the center of the window to begin the recovery process.
3. On the next screen, you will be asked to select the drive that has your requisite data. For Mail, this is generally the drive named Macintosh HD. If it is something else, then choose accordingly. Click on the Scan button on the top right to begin scanning.
4. The next screen will show you all the files that iBeesoft Data Recovery for Mac can recover for you. Find the email attachments you want to recover and select them. You can also preview the files to make sure you are only recovering the files you need.
5. Once you have selected all the files, click on the Recover button on top of the window to download the files to your Mac hard drive.

In case the attachments do not show up through the normal scan, you can also click on the Deep Scan option on the top left of the final screen to perform a more thorough search. This will take more time but you will surely find the files you need.

Part 4. How To Remove the Mail App from Mac – FAQs

1. Does mail consume storage on your Macbook?

Depending on how many attachments you get and their sizes, Mail can end up consuming a significant chunk of storage on your Mac. The larger the attachments are and the more frequent they come, the quicker your storage will get full.

2. Why does Mail take so much storage on my Mac?

If your Mail app is taking up a lot of storage on your Mac, then there is a big chance of a large influx of attachments, especially large files. In such a case, you should know how to clear mail cache on Mac or even the entire storage used by the app. In more drastic conditions, you may also need to learn how to remove the Mail app from Mac entirely.

3. Is it possible to delete the Mail app from my Mac?

It is certainly possible to remove the Mail app entirely from your Mac. However, if you do it manually, you will need to disable your Mac’s security and write code lines in Terminal to do that. Otherwise, you will need to find a trustworthy tool that can do it for you. We have shared details on how to uninstall Mail app on Mac using both these methods in the article above.

4. How do I delete mail permanently from my Mac?

If you do not want to figure out how to uninstall Mail app on Mac and just want to remove large emails, then you can do so directly from your mailbox. This can either be done manually by selecting each email and deleting it or using a third-party cleaner tool. Either way, you will find the deleted email in your Trash, and to remove it permanently, you need to select the Empty Trash option to complete the deletion process.