How to Mark All Emails as Read in Gmail

This month, Apple updated its iPhone operating system to the new iOS7. From its brilliant aesthetic layout to several internal updates, such as enhanced camera functionality, there are several new features that bring applause Apple's iOS team.

250+ Unread emails after the iOS7 update

However, one of my dislikes is how my email inbox suddenly displayed 250+ unread messages. The majority of these unread emails were being imported from my Gmail account. Some of these unread messages dated back to 2005; 3 years before the first iPhone was released.

I already seen all these emails –either they were single word email received responses with "ok" or "thanks" or they were sales emails from online retailers and I was not interesting in reading them.

In an effort to display less then ten emails in my email icon, I figured out how to quickly mark all of the emails as "read." 

3 Simple Steps to Marking All Gmails as "Read" 

It's easiest to follow these steps from a personal computer and NOT an iPhone. 

1) Watch this video, which overviews the process and details the new Gmail look/feel (the legacy appearance was discontinued in August 2013). 

2) After watching the video, open Gmail's settings and change the display to show "100" messages at a time (see screenshot below). Gmail's standard view is 20 email or "conversations" and changing to "100 conversations per page" will make the process go quicker, especially heavy users of Gmail.

3) Follow the steps detailed in the video above. Click "more" and then the drop down item as "mark all as read." You can then scroll through all of the pages to mark these emails as "read."

The entire process should take 5-10 minutes, depending on how many emails you have. ...And you will be rewarded with a more accurate (non-overwhelming) email count on the new iOS 7!

An accurate count of unread emails

Bonus Tip: If you search "is:unread" in Gmail (see screenshot below), it will show ALL of the unread emails, including emails that may have been filtered into your SPAM folder.