Block an email address in three steps

Open the email from the sender you want to block. Look for the three vertical dots (⋮) in the top right corner of the email and click it. A menu will appear — select Block "[sender's name]" from the list. Gmail will when ready stop delivering emails from that address to your inbox and send them to spam instead.

That is the entire process. Once you block someone, you will not see their emails unless you go looking in your spam folder. Gmail does not notify the sender that you blocked them.

If you want to unblock the address later, you can do that from your Gmail settings. Go to Settings (the gear icon in the top right), click See all settings, then the Filters and Blocked Addresses tab. You will see a list of every address you have blocked. Click Unblock next to any name to restore their emails to your inbox.

Key Takeaways

  • The block button is in the three-dot menu at the top of any email from that sender.
  • Blocked emails go to your spam folder automatically — they do not disappear entirely.
  • You can unblock an address anytime from Settings > Filters and Blocked Addresses.
  • Blocking works on the email address itself, so if someone sends from a different address, that new address is not automatically blocked.
  • Gmail does not tell the sender you blocked them, and they will not know their emails stopped arriving.

What happens when you block someone

When you block an email address, Gmail routes all future messages from that sender directly to your spam folder. You will not see a notification, and the email will not land in your inbox. If you check your spam folder, the blocked emails will be there, but Gmail will delete them automatically after 30 days.

The block applies only to that specific email address. If the sender creates a new email account and writes to you from a different address, Gmail will not automatically block the new one — you will need to block it separately. This matters if someone is harassing you from multiple accounts.

Blocking is different from unsubscribing. When you unsubscribe from a mailing list, you are asking the sender to remove you from their distribution. When you block, you are telling Gmail to ignore that address entirely, regardless of what the sender does. Blocking is permanent until you choose to undo it.

Block an email address from your phone

The process on the Gmail app for iPhone or Android is nearly identical. Open the email, tap the three dots in the top right corner, and select Block [sender]. The app will confirm the block and move the email to spam.

To unblock on your phone, open Settings in the Gmail app, scroll down and tap Blocked addresses, find the address you want to unblock, and tap the minus sign next to it. The change syncs across all your devices — if you unblock on your phone, the address is unblocked on your computer too.

Block emails before you read them

If you know an email address is sending you unwanted messages but you have not received anything yet, you can create a filter to block it preemptively. Go to Settings, click See all settings, then the Filters and Blocked Addresses tab. At the bottom, click Create a new filter.

Type the email address in the From field and click Create filter. On the next screen, check the box next to Delete it (or Skip the inbox if you want to keep the emails in spam instead of deleting them). Click Create filter again. Any emails from that address will now go straight to spam or be deleted, even if you have never received anything from them before.

When blocking is not enough

If someone is sending you repeated unwanted emails after you have blocked them, they may be creating new accounts to get around the block. In that case, blocking individual addresses becomes tedious. Consider creating a filter that blocks emails based on content instead of sender address.

Go to Settings > Filters and Blocked Addresses > Create a new filter. In the Subject or Has the words field, type a word or phrase that appears in the unwanted emails. Click Create filter and select Delete it or Skip the inbox. Gmail will catch emails with that phrase regardless of who sends them.

If the harassment is severe or threatening, do not rely on Gmail's tools alone. Take screenshots of the emails, report them to Gmail by clicking the three dots and selecting Report phishing or Report spam, and consider reporting the behavior to local law enforcement if it involves threats or illegal activity.

Blocked addresses and forwarded emails

If you have set up a filter to forward emails to another account, blocking does not stop the forwarding. A blocked email will still be forwarded to your other address before it lands in spam. If you want to block an address completely and prevent forwarding, you need to delete the forwarding rule first.

Go to Settings > Forwarding and POP/IMAP > Forwarding address and delete the rule, then create your block. Alternatively, edit the forwarding rule to exclude the blocked address by creating a filter that deletes or skips the inbox before the forwarding rule runs.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I block an entire domain instead of one email address?

Gmail does not have a built-in button to block a whole domain, but you can create a filter that does the job. Go to Settings > Filters and Blocked Addresses > Create a new filter, type @example.com (replacing "example.com" with the domain you want to block) in the From field, and select Delete it. All emails from any address at that domain will go to spam or be deleted.

Will the person I blocked know I blocked them?

No. Gmail does not send a notification to the sender, and they will not receive any message saying their emails are blocked. They may eventually notice you are not responding, but they will have no way to know whether you blocked them, marked them as spam, or straightforward stopped reading their messages.

Can I block emails from a group or mailing list?

Yes, but blocking the group address will not stop individual members from emailing you if they have your address. If you want to stop receiving emails from a mailing list, look for an unsubscribe link at the bottom of the email — that is usually faster than blocking. If there is no unsubscribe link, you can block the list address or create a filter to delete emails with the list's name in the subject line.

What if I blocked someone by mistake?

Go to Settings > Filters and Blocked Addresses, find the address in the blocked list, and click Unblock. Their emails will start arriving in your inbox again, and any messages they sent while blocked will still be in your spam folder. You can move them back to your inbox manually if you want to read them.

Does blocking on Gmail block them on other Google services?

No. Blocking an email address in Gmail only affects Gmail. If you use Google Meet, Google Calendar, or other Google services, that person can still contact you through those apps. You would need to block them separately in each service if you want to prevent contact across all of Google's platforms.