With the Mac OS an email can be deleted, without first going to Trash, by using Command-x. I use it a lot for emails I know I will never want again. Some will sit in Trash for a while "just in case" and be permanently deleted later.

In iOS there doesn't seem to be the Command-x equivalent....unless I just can't find it. Does iOS have that ability?

Not that I have found. The best you can do is delete the message and then go into the Trash and delete it from there.

With iOS 7 there is an option to have listed "All Trash", which as the name indicates, displays messages that have been trashed from any account on the iDevice. This allows you to go to one place to perform the above deletions (useful if you have more than one e-mail account).

Rats. That's what I was afraid the answer would be. Oh well, I guess we can hope the folks at Apple think to add the convenience of "Poof! It's Gone".

Or, they can continue believing that the prospect of "What? No! I didn't really mean to delete that! Whaddya mean, there's no way to get it back!" is the greater inconvenience. (Alternatively, "No, that's not the one I meant to delete. I wanted to delete the one below it." Or "I didn't mean to delete them all, just that one." Or even, "Wait, did I delete the right one? Let me look at again just to make sure.")

Except....they already provide "Poof! It's gone" with OSX, so they can't be that worried about it...and it has the safety feature of requiring a deliberate 'two keys depressed' action. I'm just looking for continuity of convenience features from one system to another.

My guess is that most people send email to trash by clicking on Delete, providing the safety aspect you mention.

And, isn't this why we should back-up our data?

Actually the OS X functionalities are moving toward those in iOS not the other way around. In other words, I think what we will see in Maverick (later this month?) will be even more like what we are seeing in iOS 7.


I would guess your guess is pretty accurate. At least I almost always click on delete then if and when the Trash folder gets too big before it is automatically emptied, I will go there, select any message, press Command+A, then click the Delete icon to clean house.


All of my email accounts are IMAP and the trash is saved on the server, not on my computer. I know the IMAP servers are backed up, but I for one would have no clue how to retrieve a file from one of those backups. So that backup really doesn't do me any good unless it is needed to provide recovery in the event of a failure of the IMAP server.

Well, that's a drag. It means a four step process to delete "instantly" (select Trash, select the Mailbox, select the trashed email, select Trash again)...not quite instant.

As an alternative it'd be good if they allowed a Select All in the Trash folder with the ability to deselect the mail you're not yet sure about trashing.