How to mark a message as unread on iPhone

Have you ever opened a text message or iMessage on iPhone and then forgot to reply to it because it was no longer marked as unread? Or maybe you read a message and want to think about how to respond, and have a reminder to do so? Almost all of us have been in these situations, which is why the ability to mark a message as unread is one of the neatest new features available on the iPhone.

With any iPhone running iOS 16 or later, you can mark a message as unread, which keeps the notification badge on both the Messages icon and the indicator next to the message itself. Marking messages as unread makes it easy to return to messages and reply to them later, just like marking emails as unread works.

How to mark messages as unread on iPhone

Marking messages as unread (or read) is super easy, here’s how it works:

1. Open the Messages app if you haven’t already
2. Find the message you want to mark as unread
3. Swipe right on a message to reveal the “Mark as unread” option.



4. The message will immediately be marked as unread, which is indicated by the small dot icon next to the left of the person’s avatar



5. Repeat with other messages to mark them as unread as well

You can quickly swipe right and release to mark the message as unread. This works the same way with iMessages (blue messages) and text messages (green messages) in the Messages app.

And similarly, you can mark messages as read on iPhone too, using the same gesture and trick, by swiping right on a new message to mark it as read.

If you’re already familiar with marking emails as read in the Mail app on iPhone, this gesture will be familiar and you’ll be using it right away.

Remember, if you mark a message as unread, the red badge icon will also appear or adjust on the Messages icon on the home screen to indicate that the message is unread.

For what it’s worth, this trick works just as well on Messages for iPad, as long as the iPad is running iPadOS 16.1 or later.

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