How to whitelist an entire domain in Gmail

Gmail’s spam filters have become significantly more aggressive in recent years. Following Google’s February 2024 bulk sender requirements and their November 2025 enforcement escalation, Gmail now permanently rejects non-compliant mail rather than just delaying it. As a result, legitimate emails from known and trusted senders are being filtered more frequently than ever, even from domains your contacts actively want to hear from.

Whitelisting a domain in Gmail instructs Gmail to always deliver emails from that domain directly to your inbox, bypassing the spam filter entirely. It is the most reliable way to ensure you never miss emails from a specific company, service, or sender. This guide covers how to whitelist a single email address, an entire domain, and what to do on mobile where the full filter interface is not available.

Why Gmail sends legitimate emails to spam

Gmail uses a combination of sender reputation scoring, content analysis, and authentication verification to decide where to deliver each email. Even when a sender has properly configured SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records, Gmail can still route their messages to spam if:

• The sender’s domain has a low or unestablished reputation with Gmail
• Other Gmail users have previously marked similar messages as spam
• The email content matches patterns Gmail associates with promotional or bulk mail
• Gmail’s AI models predict a low likelihood that you will engage with the email
• The sender is a new domain or has recently changed their sending infrastructure

Whitelisting bypasses all of these checks for the senders you specify. It tells Gmail: regardless of your own analysis, deliver this. If you are a marketer concerned about your own emails landing in spam for your recipients, see our guides on email inbox placement and avoiding the junk folder and sender reputation.

How to whitelist a domain or email address in Gmail (desktop)

The Gmail filter interface has remained consistent through 2025 and 2026. These steps work in both personal Gmail and Google Workspace accounts.

Step 1: Open Gmail Settings

Sign in to your Gmail account. Click the gear icon in the upper right corner, then click “See all settings”:

Step 2: Navigate to Filters and Blocked Addresses

In the Settings screen, click the “Filters and Blocked Addresses” tab. This tab shows all your existing filters and gives you the option to create new ones. Click “Create a new filter”:

Step 3: Enter the domain or email address to whitelist

In the “From” field, enter the sender you want to whitelist:

• To whitelist an entire domain (all emails from that company): enter @domainname.com with the at-sign prefix. For example, to whitelist all emails from DailyStory, enter @dailystory.com.
• To whitelist a single email address: enter the full address, such as [email protected].

Here is an example using the dailystory.com domain:

Leave all other fields blank unless you want to add additional filtering criteria. Click “Create filter” to proceed to the next step.

Step 4: Select the filter action

On the next screen, check the “Never send it to Spam” box:

Click “Create filter” to save. Gmail will immediately apply the rule to all future incoming emails from that domain or address. You can optionally check “Also apply filter to matching conversations” to apply it to emails already in your inbox or spam folder from that sender.

How to whitelist on Gmail mobile (iOS and Android)

The Gmail mobile app does not provide access to the full filter creation interface. You cannot create a “Never send to spam” filter from your phone. However, you can take two actions that train Gmail’s algorithm to treat a sender more favorably:

• Move emails from spam to inbox: Open your Spam folder, find an email from the sender, tap the three-dot menu in the top right, and select “Move to Inbox.” Gmail uses this action as a positive signal that the email was misclassified.
• Mark as Not Spam: While viewing an email in the Spam folder, tap the three-dot menu and select “Report not spam.” This is the most direct feedback you can give Gmail on mobile that the sender is trusted.
• Add the sender to your contacts: Contacts are less likely to be flagged as spam by Gmail. Open an email from the sender, tap their name or email address, and save them as a contact. This is a quick action that helps across all devices.

For a permanent, rule-based whitelist that fully bypasses the spam filter, you need to create the filter on a desktop browser. Any filter you create on desktop will apply to Gmail across all devices, including mobile.

How to whitelist a domain in Google Workspace (for admins)

If you manage email for an organization using Google Workspace (formerly G Suite) and need to whitelist a domain for everyone in your organization rather than just yourself, the process is different. Individual user filters affect only that user’s account. Organization-level whitelisting requires admin console access.

1. Sign in to the Google Workspace Admin Console.
2. Navigate to Apps, then Google Workspace, then Gmail.
3. Click “Spam, Phishing and Malware.”
4. Find the “Email allowlist” section (previously called “Inbound gateway” in older versions of the admin console).
5. Enter the IP addresses or domains you want to allowlist for your entire organization.
6. Click Save.

Organization-level allowlisting is particularly useful for ensuring that emails from your marketing platform, your CRM, your invoicing software, or any other critical business service reach every inbox in your organization rather than requiring each user to create their own filter individually.

How to manage and remove filters

To view, edit, or delete any filter you have created:

1. Open Gmail on desktop and click the gear icon, then “See all settings.”
2. Click the “Filters and Blocked Addresses” tab.
3. Your existing filters are listed here. Each row shows the filter criteria and the action it applies.
4. Click “edit” to modify a filter’s criteria or action, or “delete” to remove it entirely.

It is good practice to review your filters quarterly. Filters from senders you no longer use, services you have unsubscribed from, or domains that have changed can accumulate over time and occasionally cause unexpected behavior.

If you are a marketer: Whitelisting is not the fix for deliverability

Whitelisting is a recipient-side tool. It helps individual users ensure specific emails reach their inbox. If you are a marketer and your emails are landing in Gmail’s spam folder for your subscribers, asking your audience to whitelist you can help at the individual level, but it is not a scalable solution to an underlying deliverability problem.

The root causes of poor Gmail inbox placement for senders are typically:

• Missing or misconfigured SPF, DKIM, or DMARC authentication records
• A damaged sender reputation from high spam complaint rates or past list quality issues
• Sending to a stale or unengaged list that generates low open and click rates
• Sudden volume spikes that Gmail interprets as suspicious activity

For a comprehensive guide to diagnosing and fixing inbox placement issues from the sender side, see our article on 9 tips to help your email get seen and our guide on keeping a clean email list. If you are building up a new sending domain, our article on how to warm up an email IP address explains the process of establishing sender reputation from scratch.

For businesses using DailyStory, our platform automatically applies consistent SPF, DKIM, and DMARC authentication to all outbound emails and includes list hygiene tools to help protect your sender reputation over time. Schedule a free demo to see how it works.