"Empty Trash Now" will clear all without checking the boxes.
I don't see a way to clear trash more frequently than every 30 days.

At the top of my messages in my gmail trash folder is a line that says 'Empty trash now' (in blue, underlined). If you click it it warns you you are deleting all the messages. Click 'OK' and it's done.

I read every option in my Gmail Trash folder, and there is no "Empty Trash Now" button. Above the messages it says: Select: All, None, Read, Unread, Starred, Unstarred. It also has a More Actions menu, none of which says "Empty Trash Now".

I'm stumped as to why mine is different.

Dee

I don't understand either Dee. In mine it's not a button, just a line of text.

{{gwi:1473256}}

Thanks for the responses, especially the screenshot, bob.

I looked in both the Standard and the older version of Gmail, and the option to "Empty Trash Now" is definitely not there. There is nothing at all in front of the message in parentheses about the 30-day deletion. Very odd.

Dee

I think the "Empty Trash Now" option only shows up when there is actually Trash...when the trash is deleted the option vanishes.
Put something in Trash and go look.

well if you have the buttons you mentioned you do have a method to delete all in the folder simply choose the select ALL button and hit delete poof they are gone no need to put checks on them it does it for you when you select all.

Duh. I feel like a dip. I have NoScript on Firefox, and when I enabled it, which I don't have to do to handle my mail, there was the "Empty Trash Now" choice right where bob said it was. Thanks so much for everyone's attempts to help. *walks off muttering to self*

Dee

Wow, mine go back to January. I don't have the button either nor 'select all.' I do have Adblock, but how do you shut it off? Where do I go to let me see the button?

Jane

ad block does not hide any of those buttons I have it on my pc and see all the buttons and links mentioned in gmail.
it really doesn't matter since gmail gives you so much space doubt it fills up and they just give you more every so often.

but I have never seen one that did not show those options as shown in the screen shot of select: All None Read etc. Mine is exactly like the screen shot. Only one I bother clearing out is the spam and it also has the link to clear all at once which is what I use.

When you are in Gmail, in the upper right hand corner of your screen, next to "settings", your should see either "Older version" or "new version". If you see "new version" there, try changing to that and see if you get the options you are missing.