Not receiving emails on Gmail? Here's how to fix it

Gmail not receiving emails? There’s nothing worse than waiting around for an email that the sender swears they’ve sent. Luckily, there is pretty much always a quick fix. In fact, there’s usually a handful of common reasons this happens in the first place, and surprisingly it’s not always an issue with Gmail servers.

Anyway, I’ll walk you through all the causes and fixes, so you can get back to your mailbox.

Checklist: Why am I not receiving emails on Gmail?

Before you go headfirst into any complex resets or fixes, I really recommend working through this quick checklist. This might save you some serious time, and in most of the issues I’ve ever had, one of these has fixed the problem instantly.

1. Check Spam and Trash folders; honestly, 40% of "missing" emails are usually found here.

2. Check All Mail (Left sidebar > More > All Mail). The email could have been randomly archived.

3. Search the exact sender email in the top search bar; that way you can bypass folder filtering.

4. Send yourself a test email from another account to confirm the account is still receiving emails.

5. Check google.com/appsstatus in case Gmail is legitimately down.

So if the quick checks haven’t helped and Gmail is not receiving emails, it’s time to get to some of the bigger fixes.

Gmail storage full not receiving

This one can really catch users out because if your Google storage 15 GB free tier, which is shared across your Drive and Photos, is 100% full, then your Gmail will stop accepting new mail. So, senders get a bounce-back, and you literally get nothing. Until you’ve freed up space, you won’t be able to receive any new emails.

First, you should go and check what’s happening to your Google Storage: one.google.com/storage

You’ll then need to start reclaiming space; this is what I always do. Type this into your search bar: 

• has:attachment larger:10M and delete any huge attachments.

Then empty your Spam and Trash folders to actually permanently delete and free up the Gmail storage.

I’d also read this full guide on how to clean up Gmail storage.

If you haven’t got the time or energy to manually free up Gmail storage space, then I’d use Email Cleanup in CleanMyMac's My Tools section in the sidebar. Once you’ve connected your Gmail account, you’ll be able to free up space quickly by searching through your inbox by type, sender, year, and attachment size.

Good to know that any removed items go to Gmail Trash and are recoverable for 30 days. If you haven’t yet, you can test CleanMyMac for 7 days — get your free trial here. All features work, so you can really get to grips with it.

Gmail not receiving emails: Check your filters

Filters can auto-archive, even auto-delete, forward, and label incoming mail; if you set any up years ago, you might have forgotten.

1. In your Gmail Settings (the gear icon) > See all settings > Filters and Blocked Addresses.

2. Have a look here to see what’s been set up, and delete or disable anything that catches mail you actually want to receive.

An old "Skip Inbox" rule from when you organized promotions might be sending other mail to a different folder; it's pretty common, so it's definitely worth checking.

Also, check your forwarding settings too: go back to Settings > Forwarding and POP/IMAP and double-check that nothing is forwarding your mail out.

Blocked senders

Maybe you blocked the sender by accident, and this could be why you’re having issues with Gmail not receiving emails from one sender.

Blocked addresses have their mail sent straight to your Spam, so you’ll never see them come in. You can do a quick check in your Settings > Filters and Blocked Addresses > Blocked Addresses list. If they are blocked, you just have to unblock them, then all future emails sent from them should come straight into your inbox.

It’s probably also worth checking that your address book or contacts haven't accidentally marked the sender as "spam" via an accidental click.

The email app or client isn't syncing

If you're using the Gmail app on your iPhone or Android and emails are missing there, but when you log in via the web, you can see the emails, you’ve got an app-sync issue.

Try pull-to-refresh a few times, then force-quit and reopen the app.

For personal Gmail accounts, IMAP access is now switched on automatically, so you can’t enable it manually in Gmail settings. If you're setting Gmail up again in another mail app, Google recommends using Sign in with Google rather than giving the app your Gmail password directly.

If that doesn’t work, I'd try removing and re-adding the Gmail account completely; sometimes if you’ve recently changed your Google password, auth tokens can go stale, so this helps to refresh that.

I’ve also had some success on the web by trying an incognito window; sometimes extensions occasionally block Gmail scripts.

Gmail not receiving emails but sending fine: other complex fixes

If you're using Gmail with a custom domain via Google Workspace, then missing mail can indicate you’ve got broken MX records. You can do a check with nslookup -type=mx yourdomain.com.

If you’re a Google Workspace admin, then you can also use Email Log Search (Admin console > Reporting > Email Log Search) to find messages from the past 30 days.

Again, if you haven’t already, then I would check google.com/appsstatus or use a Downdetector.

If absolutely none of the above has helped, then sign out, then sign back in, and if the problem persists across devices and browsers, contact Gmail support.

One of these fixes should have solved Gmail not receiving emails, but if you’re still stuck — and I really hope not — you might have to think about reaching out to Gmail support.