Accidentally blocking someone feels like a digital death sentence for a conversation. You clicked a button three months ago during a clutter-clearing frenzy, and now your boss, your landlord, or your mom is wondering why you’re "ghosting" them. It happens. Honestly, Gmail makes it incredibly easy to block people, but finding the "unblock" button? That’s buried under a few layers of settings that most people never touch. If you're wondering how do you unblock someone in gmail, you're probably staring at a silent inbox and hoping a specific message hasn't been lost to the void forever.
Google’s interface is sleek, sure, but it's also a maze.
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The reality is that blocking someone doesn't actually delete their past emails. It just tells Google's filters to shove anything new from that address straight into the Spam folder. It’s a silent filter. No bells, no whistles, just a one-way ticket to the digital basement. If you’ve realized that the "annoying" newsletter was actually a critical update, or that person you were mad at in 2022 is now someone you actually need to hear from, you need to dive into the filters.
The Quick Way to Unblock via a Specific Email
Maybe you still have one of their old emails sitting in your Trash or Spam folder. If you do, you’re in luck. This is the fastest route. Open that email. Look at the top right corner of the message—right next to the "Reply" arrow—and you’ll see three vertical dots. Click those. If the person is currently blocked, one of the options in that dropdown menu will literally say "Unblock [Name]."
Click it.
A small pop-up will appear just to make sure you didn't misclick. Confirm it, and boom—they're back in your good graces. But what if you deleted every single trace of them? What if there is no email to click on? That's where most people get stuck.
How Do You Unblock Someone in Gmail When You Can't Find Their Emails?
When the paper trail is gone, you have to go into the "engine room" of your Gmail account. This is the "Settings" area. Most users stay away from here because it looks like a spreadsheet from 1998, but it’s where your block list lives.
To get there, click the gear icon in the top right of your Gmail dashboard. You'll see a sidebar, but ignore that. You need to click "See all settings." This opens the full dashboard. From here, look at the tabs across the top: General, Labels, Inbox... you want Filters and Blocked Addresses.
Once you click that, scroll down. Past all your custom filters—the ones that send your receipts to a specific folder or skip the inbox for "Urgent" keywords—you’ll find a section titled "The following email addresses are blocked." This is your "naughty list."
Managing the Blocked List
It’s an alphabetical list of every soul you’ve ever shunned on the platform. To unblock someone here, you just find their email address and click the "Unblock" link on the far right. If you’re feeling generous and want to unblock everyone at once, there’s a checkbox at the top of the list to select all, followed by a mass unblock button.
It's actually quite therapeutic to see who you blocked five years ago.
You might see an old landlord, a recruiter who wouldn't take "no" for an answer, or a political campaign that wouldn't stop asking for five dollars. Unblocking them here is instantaneous. The moment you click that link, the filter is deleted. Any new emails they send will land in your Primary inbox just like everyone else.
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What Happens to the Emails They Sent While Blocked?
This is the part Google doesn't broadcast: unblocking someone isn't retroactive.
If John Smith sent you five emails while he was on your block list, those emails are currently sitting in your Spam folder. Unblocking him now will not magically move those five emails into your Inbox. They stay in Spam. If it’s been more than 30 days since he sent them, Google has likely deleted them forever.
If you just unblocked someone, your next step should always be to go to your Spam folder and search for their name. If the emails are still there, select them and click "Not Spam." This trains Gmail’s AI that you actually want to see this person’s content again. It’s a two-step process for total recovery.
Unblocking on the Gmail Mobile App (iOS and Android)
The mobile experience is slightly different. If you’re on an iPhone or an Android device, you can’t actually see your full "Blocked Addresses" list in the app. It’s a weird limitation of the mobile version.
To unblock someone on mobile, you must have an email from them available to view.
- Open the Gmail app.
- Find an email from the person (check Spam if it's not in the Inbox).
- Tap the email to open it.
- Look for the "Unblock sender" button. It's usually in a grey box at the very top of the message body, or hidden in the three-dot menu next to the sender's name.
If you don't have an email from them, you're going to have to open a mobile browser (like Safari or Chrome), log into Gmail there, and request the "Desktop Site" to access the "Filters and Blocked Addresses" settings we talked about earlier. It’s a bit of a headache, so if you have a laptop nearby, use it.
Why Some People Stay "Blocked" Even After You Unblock Them
Technology is glitchy. Sometimes you follow every step, you see their name vanish from the blocked list, and yet... silence. No emails.
Check your Filters.
Sometimes, instead of using the official "Block" button, you (or a plugin you used) might have created a manual filter. Go back to that "Filters and Blocked Addresses" tab in your settings. Look through the top section—the part where it says "The following filters are applied to all incoming mail."
Look for any filter that says "Matches: [Email Address] - Do this: Delete it."
If you have a manual filter set to "Delete it," that overrides almost everything. Even if the person isn't technically "blocked" in the official Google sense, your custom filter is snatching their emails out of the air and tossing them in the trash before you ever see them. Delete that filter by clicking the "Delete" button on the right side of the screen.
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A Note on Google Workspace Accounts
If you are using a Gmail account provided by your work or school (Google Workspace), there’s a small chance your IT administrator has blocked a domain at the server level. If you've unblocked "john@company.com" and his emails still aren't arriving—and they aren't in your Spam folder—the issue might be higher up the chain. In this case, no amount of clicking in your personal settings will fix it. You’d need to reach out to your IT department to see if the entire domain has been blacklisted.
Practical Next Steps for Clean Inbox Management
Now that you've fixed the immediate problem, you should take a moment to ensure your inbox stays functional. Unblocking someone is just the first step in digital hygiene.
First, search your Trash and Spam folders immediately using the search operator from:email@address.com. This ensures you haven't missed a "final notice" or an important attachment while the block was active. Move anything important back to your Inbox.
Second, add the person to your Google Contacts. Google's spam filters are much more lenient with people who are actually in your contact list. It's a "safe" signal to the algorithm.
Third, if you unblocked a newsletter but still don't want it cluttering your main feed, don't block them again. Instead, use a filter to skip the inbox and apply a label. This way, the information is searchable and available if you ever need it, but it won't buzz your phone at 3 AM.
Finally, if you find yourself blocking and unblocking the same people frequently, consider using the "Mute" feature instead. Muting a conversation keeps it out of your inbox unless you are specifically @mentioned, but it doesn't have the "hard stop" of a block. It's a much more elegant way to handle group chats or talkative colleagues without losing the ability to see their messages entirely.
Check your blocked list at least once a year. You’d be surprised how many people you’ve "canceled" over a temporary annoyance who might actually have something important to say later on.