How to Mark Messages As Unread on an iPhone With iOS 16
- Starting with iOS 16, Apple allows you to mark text messages as unread in the Messages app on your iPhone.
- You can mark a conversation as unread by swiping right on it, or by tapping and holding the conversation and then selecting Mark as unread in the quick actions.
- In the filter view you can now only see your unread messages.
If you’re a longtime iPhone user, you probably know the frustration of reading a text message and then forgetting to reply to it.
Apple fixed this annoyance in iOS 16 by adding the ability to mark messages as unread on iPhone. If you don’t have time to reply right now, you can mark it as unread as a reminder to come back to it later. Even better, you can change the view in the Messages app to only show the unread messages.
How to mark messages as unread on iPhone
There are several ways to mark messages as unread. Launch the Messages app and go to the conversation list. Once there, you can choose the method that is most convenient:
- Tap a conversation. Find the conversation you want to mark as unread. Tap and hold the chat until the message preview window appears, then tap To mark as unread from the list of quick actions at the bottom of the screen.
When you tap and hold a conversation, the option to mark it as unread appears at the bottom of the screen.
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- In a conversation, swipe right. Swipe a conversation to the right. If you swipe all the way, it will automatically be marked as unread; If you partially swipe it, release it and tap To mark as unread button on the left.
Swipe right on a conversation to reset it to unread.
Dave Johnson/Insider
- Select multiple conversations at once. Tap the Three point menu at the top of the screen and select Select Messages from the drop down menu. Tap each message you want to mark as unread to select it, then tap Unread at the bottom of the screen.
You can select multiple conversations and mark them all as unread.
Dave Johnson/Insider
How to find all unread messages at once
You can only filter the conversations in the Messages app to your unread chats. From the conversation list, tap filter top left. Then tap on the Filters page unread messages. This is where you’ll see all your unread messages – both messages you haven’t read and messages you’ve manually marked as unread.
If you have a lot of unread messages, you might want to filter the view and only see unread messages.
Dave Johnson/Insider