One of the things that most annoyed me when switching from Gmail to Inbox equally my main email customer was how y'all could no longer marking emails as read. My email workflow had e'er consisted of manually marking emails as read before archiving them, and I didn't appreciate the change. Information technology might just exist my unhealthy obsession with being unreasonably neat and organized — information technology probably is — but it actually irks me to think that there might be an unread email hiding somewhere in my archive.

In an ideal scenario, email notifications from the Gmail and Inbox apps would accept something like an "Archive and Mark every bit Read" button for those cases when yous know correct abroad that you tin archive an email without having to read it. A decent alternative is what we already have in Gmail, where you can select a bunch of emails and, in two taps, marking them as read and archive them. Notwithstanding, this even so requires opening the app every time, and if you utilise Inbox like I exercise, you don't even take that selection.

Fortunately, I am not the simply person who suffers from this incurable malady, and after some searching effectually on the internet, I somewhen found a much improve solution — and one that works equally well for both Inbox and Gmail.

The answer I finally came across was by a guy named Mike Crittenden, who came upwards with it later on besides being annoyed past the aforementioned thing I was. His guide is pretty thorough, and the squeamish thing is that information technology uses nothing more than Google Apps Scripts. Basically, the script runs through all the unread emails in your email archive and marks them all as read in batches. This mode, marking an email every bit 'Done' or 'archived' finer marks them as read likewise without any additional piece of work.

After using the script for a while, I did eventually find that information technology ran into a bug when trying to mark more than 100 emails equally read at a time — which isn't as uncommon equally you might expect. Fortunately, with just a piffling tweak, I managed to get that ironed out and have been using the script successfully for a couple of years at present.

But hey, at that place'due south no sense information technology keeping information technology all to myself; I'thousand certain there are several others out there who share my distaste for unread emails in their e-mail archive, and using this trivial script volition bring you a little more peace of mind. It takes about ii minutes to set everything up, though it might be easier to do on a computer.

Here are the steps yous need to follow.

  1. Get to the Google Apps Scripts homepage and select "New script" to create a script.
  2. Delete the sample lawmaking and supplant it with the following lawmaking: 
    function markArchivedAsRead() { var threads = GmailApp.search('label:unread -label:inbox', 0, 100); GmailApp.markThreadsRead(threads);};
  3. Salve the projection by clicking on File > Save and then requite information technology an illustrative name similar "Mark archived as read."
  4. Click on Run > Run office > markArchivedAsRead and select "Review Permissions" when the popular-upwardly appears.
  5. Authorize the app you just created by selecting your Gmail account and granting it access to manage your electronic mail. You lot may get a "This app isn't verified" warning, but there'southward no need to worry: yous merely created this script, so it manifestly hasn't been verified by Google. Just hit "Advanced" and so "Get to Mark archived as read (unsafe)" (or whatever you lot named your project) and you're good.
  6. Now, add a trigger to the script so it tin periodically check for unread e-mail in your archive by going to Edit > Current projection's triggers and then clicking "No triggers set up up. Click hither to add one now."
  7. The trigger should be time-driven, and y'all tin choose how oft you lot want it to run (I have mine set to run every fifteen minutes). When you lot've set your trigger, hit Save.
  8. Finally, save the project one more time for expert measure under File > Save and close the script.

That's it. Now this little script volition continue to run in the background, quietly keeping your email archive free from unread emails.

Google employees volition be required to render to their offices starting adjacent calendar month

Remote piece of work time is over

Read Adjacent

Well-nigh The Author

Martim Lobao (242 Articles Published)

Martim is more of a numbers guy. He likes biking. He goes rock climbing to overcome his fearfulness of heights. He is also the former world-record holder for youngest human alive. To get in touch via email, delight feel gratuitous to reach me at martim [at] androidpolice.com

More than From Martim Lobao