How to Mark All Emails As Read in Gmail

Slack and Microsoft (along with Microsoft Teams) are working hard to replace email. However, the standard messaging experience is here to stay. The majority still prefer to use Gmail and Outlook to stay in touch with banking updates, favorite newsletters, and recent events from social media handles. Among all the email providers, Gmail is the most popular. The service is natively available on all Android devices and as a result dominates the consumer messaging experience with over 1.5 billion monthly active users.

Most people check the Gmail inbox once a week. Your inbox might get messed up if you have a lot of subscriptions and banking. Gmail offers some of the functions to create rules, mark all emails as read, etc. You may have seen users with thousands of unread emails on their mobile phones. This makes navigating the entire messaging experience difficult, and in hundreds of emails you might miss some important ones.

In this article, we’ll see how to mark all emails as read in Gmail web and mobile. We will also mention some tips to improve your Gmail experience. Let’s start.

Mark all emails as read in Gmail Web

There are several ways to mark all emails as read in Gmail Web. Google does not offer a direct option to mark all emails as read. Follow the steps below to mark all emails as read in Gmail Web.

Step 1: Open the browser on your PC and go to Gmail.

2nd step: Sign in using your Google Account credentials.

Step 3: In the default “Inbox” menu, you will see your emails divided neatly into Main, Social, Promotions, Updates, and Forums.

Step 4: You will find the Search Mail option at the top.

Step 5: Type label: the inbox is: unread in the search box at the top of the page.

Step 6: Gmail will show the first 20 unread messages in your inbox.

Step 7: You can press the three-dot menu and select the “Mark all as read” option. You can also choose the “Select All” option, press the down arrow icon and select “Read” from the drop-down menu.

You can also tap on the “Select all” option in each section and mark all emails as read. But I don’t recommend using this option as you might miss some of the important emails in the process.

You need to follow the steps above, take a look at the unread emails, and if everything looks good, you need to use the mark all read option.

Mark all emails as read in the Gmail mobile app

I generally recommend that you mark all emails as read from the Gmail web. The experience on mobile is not as intuitive as it is on the web. When it comes to mobile apps, Android and iOS offer the same UI and UX for the Gmail app.

For this article, I’ll be using screenshots from the Android app. You can expect to use the same steps on the Gmail iOS app to mark all emails as read.

Step 1: Open the Gmail app on your phone.

2nd step: Tap the hamburger menu and scroll down to the app settings.

Step 3: Go to your Gmail account.

Step 4: The mailbox type is set by default. Tap on it and select “Unread first”.

Step 5: Go back to your Gmail inbox and you’ll see all your unread emails on the default homepage. Tap on the hamburger menu and you’ll find a new ‘Unread’ tab.

Step 6: Tap the “Unread” tab and take a look at all the unread emails in your inbox. Long press an email to select it. Then tap the profile picture of all emails to select them.

Step 7: Tap the “Read” icon at the top to mark the selected items as read in the Gmail mobile app.

You can also type label: the inbox is: unread in the search bar above, and Gmail will filter out unread emails from the inbox. Select them and mark the emails as read.

Keep unread inbox on top of Gmail Web

Google offers an option to keep unread emails at the top of the inbox. Navigating each tab in Gmail can be confusing. You can always use Gmail’s Advanced Settings option to streamline the inbox experience. Follow the steps below to enable unread inbox at the top of Gmail.

Step 1: Open the browser on your PC and go to Gmail.

2nd step: Sign in using your Google Account credentials.

Step 3: Tap the Settings icon in the top right corner.

Step 4: In the Settings menu, go to the Advanced option.

Step 5: Scroll down and activate the option “Unread message icon”.

Step 6: Tap Save Changes at the bottom.

You will now see all unread emails at the top. Take a look at them and mark them as read.

Reach Inbox Zero

Inbox Zero is the new fashion. Sometimes you might have trouble with the Gmail mobile app to find out which email missed your notification. So, follow the above steps and mark the thousands of emails as read in Gmail. Get in the habit of cleaning out the inbox once every month or two. How many unread emails do you have in Gmail? Sound off in the comments section below.