How to Block Email Tracking Pixels in Gmail (and Everywhere Else)

Open tracking depends on one thing: your mail client automatically loading a remote image. Stop that, and the tracking stops with it. There is no arms race here — turning off automatic image loading is a complete defence against pixel tracking, and it takes about thirty seconds.

Gmail on the web

1. 1Click the gear icon, then See all settings.
2. 2On the General tab, find Images.
3. 3Select Ask before displaying external images.
4. 4Scroll to the bottom and click Save Changes. The setting does not apply until you do.

From then on, messages with remote images show a small "Images are not displayed" prompt. Nothing is fetched — and no open is recorded — until you click Display images below.

Gmail on mobile

The web setting does not carry over — the apps are configured separately, and per account.

• Android: Menu → Settings → tap the account → Images → *Ask before displaying external images*.
• iOS: Menu → Settings → tap the account → Images → *Ask before displaying external images*.

Repeat for every account in the app. This catches people out — the desktop setting is changed, mobile is forgotten, and most reading happens on the phone.

Other clients

• Apple Mail: Settings → Privacy → enable Protect Mail Activity. Note this works differently — it pre-loads everything through Apple’s proxy rather than blocking, which hides you in the noise instead of staying silent. Alternatively, disable Protect Mail Activity and turn off Load Remote Content for genuine blocking.
• Outlook (desktop): File → Options → Trust Center → Trust Center Settings → Automatic Download → tick *Don’t download pictures automatically in standard HTML email*.
• Outlook.com: Settings → Mail → Junk email → Block external images. Microsoft also proxies images by default.
• Thunderbird: blocks remote content by default. Verify under Settings → Privacy & Security.
• Proton Mail: blocks by default and strips known trackers, reporting what it removed.

What this costs you

Genuine images — newsletters, receipts with logos, anything designed — need one extra click. In practice most people find this unremarkable after a week, and it makes a slow connection noticeably faster.

If a sender is someone you trust and read regularly, displaying their images once per message is a trivial cost. And crucially, you decide.

What it does not stop

Blocking images ends open tracking. It does not end everything:

• Click tracking. If you click a rewritten link, that is recorded regardless of image settings. The only defence is not clicking, or copying the link and inspecting where it actually goes.
• Workspace read receipts. A different mechanism entirely — an explicit prompt you can decline. See Gmail read receipts.
• Delivery confirmation. The sender always knows the message did not bounce.
• Anything you actually reply to. Obviously.

Do you already have some protection?

Partly, yes. Gmail proxies images through Google’s servers by default, which means senders never see your real IP address or location — they see a Google datacenter. So your location was already protected; what proxying does not stop is the fact of the open being recorded. That distinction is covered in why email tracking shows the wrong location.

Apple Mail Privacy Protection goes further and pre-loads everything for everyone, which makes your genuine opens indistinguishable from automatic ones — effective, though it inflates senders’ statistics rather than staying quiet. See Apple Mail Privacy Protection and open tracking.

A note from a company that builds a tracker

We make an email tracking tool, and we think this setting should be better known. Tracking is defensible precisely because it is avoidable — a recipient who does not want to participate is one toggle away, and that is what keeps the practice on the right side of the line.

What we do not think is defensible is a tracker that pretends an open means more than it does, or that puts an advertisement in the sender’s email while calling it transparency. Those arguments are in an open is not intent and why free email trackers add a signature.