How to Mark as Read or Unread Bulk Mails and Messages in iPhone?

Mail and Messages are the default apps that come with your iPhone as part of iOS. Whenever a new message or email is received, these apps will show a batch on the app icon showing there are unread mails/messages waiting for you. However, sometimes these apps will show the batch with no unread mail/message pending. If the red batch on the app icon is bothering you, here is how you can mark all the mails and messages as read in iPhone to remove the batch. It is also possible to mark bulk emails/messages as unread if you want to read them later.

Why Number Batch is Shown in App?

Here are some of the reasons, the Mail/Messages app shows a batch on app icon.

• You really have lot of unread messages or emails accumulated over time.
• Removed and added the email account in Mail app which downloaded all emails from the server and shows the unread reminder batch.
• Changed the email password and reconnected an email account.
• Bug in iOS that always shows the batch regardless of whether there are unread messages/mails in the app or not.

Whatsoever is the reason, here is how you can mark all mails and messages as read.

Mark All Emails as Read

• Open Mail app and go to the inbox that shows unread mails.
• Tap on “Edit” link showing on top right corner of the screen.

• Now, tap on “Select All” link showing on top left corner to select all the emails.

• Tap on “Mark” link showing on bottom left corner.

• Select “Mark as Read” option from the menu that appears.

You will see all blue dots showing left side of the emails will disappear indicating they are read. This will also remove the number in front of the inbox in the previous screen and remove the batch showing on Mail app icon on your home screen. Note that if you have multiple emails accounts in Mail app, you need to do the above steps in each inbox to mark the emails as read in that inbox.

Mark All Messages as Read

• Open Messages app and go to “All Messages” or “Unread Messages” section.

• Tap on the three dots inside circle icon showing nearer to top right corner.

• Choose “Select Messages” option from the menu that appears.

• Tap on “Read All” link showing on bottom left corner of the screen.

This will mark all the messages as read and remove the batch showing on the Messages app icon in home screen.

Update iOS

After following the above steps, if you are still seeing a batch on the Mail or Messages icon, it could be a bug in the iOS version you are using. This is especially a problem when you use beta or developer version on your iPhone.

• Tap on Settings app and go to “General” section.
• Open “Software Update” option and check any latest iOS version is available from Apple.

• If yes, download and install the latest version and check if that helped to remove the unread number batch on Mail and Messages app.
• If you are using beta or developer version, tap on “Beta Updates” option under “Software Update” section and turned it off.

You can restore iPhone to stable version from your backup or wait for the next major iOS version release from Apple to update the iPhone.

Marking as Unread in Bulk

For any reason if you want to mark one or multiple read emails/messages as unread, then follow the below steps. Remember, this is not undoing mark as read action. Marking as unread is a manual action which works only on the emails/messages you manually select.

Marking Emails as Unread

• Open Mail app and go to the inbox.
• For marking single email as unread, swipe that email on the right direction and select “Unread” option.

• For marking multiple emails as unread, tap on “Edit” link on top right corner and select the emails you want to mark as unread.

• Tap on “Mark” link on the bottom and select “Mark as Unread”.

You can also tap on “Select All” to select all emails in your inbox and then mark them as unread. However, avoid doing this with Gmail or any other email clients storing emails on the server. Otherwise, this action will try to mark all the emails as unread and crash the app if you have hundreds of thousands of emails needed to be downloaded from the server.

Marking Messages as Unread

• Open Messages app and go to “All Messages” section.
• Swipe a message on right direction and select “Mark as Unread” option.

• For bulk messages, tap on three dots inside circle icon and choose “Select Messages” menu.

• Select the items and then tap on “Unread” link showing on the bottom.

Final Words

Use the above methods to remove the batch icon if it shows wrongly or you really wanted to mark thousands of useless emails/messages as read. However, do not mark the emails/messages as read when you have important unread items. Because, once you mark the items as unread there are no options to find those items again. Though you can select and mark the items as unread in bulk, it is not possible to undo the “Mark as Read” action.