Gmail Showing 1 Unread Message? Here’s How to Find It
If you’re the type of person who likes to maintain Inbox Zero, or who recently went and tidied up their Gmail inbox to get every email marked as read, you may come across a frustrating situation where Gmail shows 1 unread message, and you simply can’t locate that unread email message in Gmail.
If you find yourself experiencing this, read along and we’ll how you how to find that unread email message in Gmail, whether in the Gmail app or Gmail website, so that you can read it or mark it as read, and get back to a 0 inbox.
How to Fix Gmail Showing 1 Unread Message (or Find Any 1 Unread Email in Gmail
Whether you’re in the Gmail app or Gmail website does not matter, this trick works the same way:
- Open Gmail (web or app) if you have not done so already and go to your inbox
- Click into the search box and type the following search parameter exactly:
- This will search in your entire Gmail inbox for all ‘unread’ email messages, and show only those unread messages
- Locate your unread email message, read it, mark it as read, or handle it as you’d wish
in:inbox is:unread
That’s it, you have now located your single unread email message, and if your Gmail app has been showing a “1” badge on it then that will go away, or if you use Gmail on the web then you’ll find the inbox count will adjust the same as well.
And yes, this trick also works to get the Mail app on iPhone, iPad, or Mac, to update to show an inbox zero as long as you perform the search trick through Gmail on the web or the Gmail app.
We originally covered the very handy Gmail is:unread and label:unread trick quite some time ago (over a decade, time flies!) but the search parameter trick still works exactly the same for surfacing your unread emails, whether you’re trying to find that 1 mystery unread email, or you simply want to only quickly see your unread emails in Gmail.
Many users who experience this issue with a mysterious 1 unread email message (or sometimes many more than one unread email, it can be dozens if not hundreds or more that they can’t locate in their gmail inbox) are using the Gmail inbox sorting feature, which is enabled by default, and that attempts to sort your email inbox automatically. That’s a controversial feature that has been around for well over a decade, but you can disable the Gmail inbox sorting and just have a normal email inbox again.
Despite automatic inbox sorting not being particularly adored or popular by every single user, not only does Gmail enable it by default, but now so does Apple, bringing often comically bad inbox sorting to their Mail app on iPhone, iPad, and Mac, which fortunately you can also disable the sorting categories in Mail for Mac here, or iPhone and iPad here.
Did this search trick resolve your issue with Gmail showing 1 unread email message, or Gmail showing any number of unread email messages that you haven’t been able to locate previously? Do you have another method to resolve this issue? Share your experiences in the comments.
