How to Block a Domain Using Google Workspace, Block Sender in Gmail Easily 2026

Before touching any settings, work out the scope of the problem. If it's one annoying sender emailing just you, Gmail's own block-and-filter tools handle it without any admin involvement. If it's a spam or phishing domain hitting multiple people across the company, that needs to be handled centrally by a super admin through the Workspace Admin Console, since a personal block in one inbox does nothing to protect anyone else's.

Open the message from the unwanted sender, click the three-dot menu in the top right of the email, and choose "Block [sender]." Gmail moves future messages from that address straight to spam. This is the fastest fix for a one-off nuisance sender, but it's scoped to your account only — it won't stop the same sender from reaching a colleague, and it won't catch that sender if they simply switch to a different address at the same domain.

For anything beyond a simple block, Gmail's filter system is more flexible: from the search bar, use the dropdown arrow to create a filter matching the sender's address or entire domain, then choose to skip the inbox, delete automatically, or apply a label. Filtering by domain (using an asterisk wildcard like *@spamdomain.com) catches senders who rotate addresses within the same domain, which a simple one-off block won't.

For a domain that's targeting the whole organization, a super admin needs to go into the Admin Console, then Apps → Google Workspace → Gmail, which opens a settings page broken into sections: Setup, End-user access, Spam, phishing and malware, Compliance, and Routing. The "Spam, phishing and malware" section specifically is where domain-level blocking and safe/blocked sender lists are configured for everyone in the domain at once, rather than one inbox at a time.

Inside the Spam, phishing and malware section, admins can maintain an explicit blocked-senders list scoped by domain or organizational unit, so the rule can apply to the whole company or just a specific team if that's all that's affected. Save the change and give it a few minutes to propagate — Workspace settings changes aren't always instant across every user's mail flow, so don't assume it failed if the first test email still lands within the first minute or two.

Whichever route you used, check back afterward: personal users should look at their filter list or blocked-address settings in Gmail to confirm the rule is active, and admins should spot-check with a colleague or a test account to make sure mail from the blocked domain is actually landing in spam or being rejected rather than slipping through. If phishing was the original concern, it's also worth reporting the domain so Google's own spam filters get better at catching it for other Workspace customers too.