Use Native Features to Mark All Messages as Read in Apple Mail
Apple Mail would never be such a popular mail client among Mac users if it didn’t support basic features like the ability to label messages as read in bulk. But you shouldn’t feel bad if you’ve never used the feature — that’s what we’re here to help you with.
Here’s how to select multiple emails on Mac in Apple Mail and mark them all as read:
- Launch the Apple Mail client.
- Select the first message by clicking on it.
- Hold the Command button and click on other messages you want to label as read.
- Right-click any of the selected messages and select the Mark as Read option.
💡 Tip: You can use the Command + A shortcut to select all mails in the current folder. Then you can right-click any of the selected messages and use the Mark as Read option.
Despite its simplicity and ease of use, Apple Mail also supports the creation of email rules (sometimes called email filters). With their help, you can automatically mark messages as read when they arrive. This is how to create a new rule in Apple Mail:
- Launch the Apple Mail client.
- Open the Mail menu and choose Settings.
- Navigate to the Rules tab.
- Click the Add Rule button.
- Name the new rule and specify the trigger conditions.
- Under “Perform the following actions” choose the Mark as Read option.
- Click OK to create the rule.
The native inbox organization features provided by Apple Mail can certainly get the job done, but they leave a lot to be desired in terms of usability and convenience.
Let’s say you want to mark as read all existing and future mails from a couple of different senders or with several different subject lines. In such a case, you would need to manually enter the correct trigger conditions for each group of messages, such as messages from cheapcrypto@notspam.com and those with the subject “GET FREE CRYPTO – NOT SPAM!!!” A single mistake could result in the wrong messages being marked as read, potentially causing you to not notice them.
Fortunately, you don’t have to rely only on the native inbox organization features provided by Apple Mail. You can use a third-party inbox organizer like Clean Email to effortlessly select all message groups you want to mark as read and create filters based on them, and we explain how to do just that in the next section.
Mark All as Read in Apple Mail Using Clean Email
Clean Email is an excellent solution for marking as read multiple messages at the same time and (optionally) ensuring that all future messages matching the same criteria are marked automatically.
Here’s how to mark your first messages as read using Clean Email:
- Go to https://app.clean.email and log in to the email account associated with your Apple Mail client.
- Select Inbox in the left pane.
- Click the Group By drop-down menu to tell Clean Email how you want it to group your messages.
- Click the icon next to each message group you want to select.
- Depending on if you want to mark the selected messages just once or have Clean Email mark them automatically, you can either:
- Click the Mark as Read button to mark the selected messages just once.
- Or click the Create Rule button to create an Auto Clean rule based on the selected messages. Then choose to apply the Mark Read action.
![Click the Mark as Read button]()
![Click the Mark as Read button]()
![Click the Create Rule button]()
![Click the Create Rule button]()
If you just want to quickly mark as read all unread messages, then Clean Email can help you too. Thanks to its sophisticated inbox organization capabilities, it’s easy to display all mails of a certain kind, such as those that haven’t been opened yet, and label them as read. Here’s how:
- Go to https://app.clean.email and log in to the email account associated with your Apple Mail client.
- Select the Unread Mail category in the Favorites section of the left pane.
- Click Select → Select All.
- Click Mark Read.
Now, you won’t find any unread email in your inbox!
💡 Tip: Do you often receive newsletters and other subscription emails that are relevant only when they are fresh? If so, you can use the Keep Newest feature in Clean Email to automatically mark all but the latest message as read.
Can I Mark All Emails as Read in Apple Mail on My iPhone?
Yes, you can! Here’s how to select multiple emails on iPhone in the Mail app and mark them all as read:
- Launch the Mail app.
- Select the folder that contains the messages you want to label as read.
- Tap the Edit button in the top-right corner.
- Tap the circle next to each message you want to select. Alternatively, you can tap Select All in the top-left corner to select all messages in the current folder.
- Select the Mark option at the bottom and choose Mark as Read.
You can follow the same steps to delete multiple emails. Just choose Move to Junk instead of Mark as Read.
As you can see, it doesn’t take much effort to label all emails as read in the native Mail app once you have them selected, which is the difficult part because you have only two options: select individual messages one by one or select all messages in one go.
But what if you want to select emails from a specific sender or emails that are more than a month old? In such situations, Clean Email, which we’ve described earlier in this article, is the superior solution, allowing you to filter out mails using pre-defined and custom filters.
FAQ
If I want to mark all messages as read using Clean Email, do I need to buy a license?
No, you don’t. The free version of Clean Email can label up to 1,000 messages as read, and you can also take advantage of a 14-day free trial of the full version to test everything else this powerful inbox organizer has to offer.
Can I revert and mark messages as unread? Can I do this in bulk?
Yes, most mail clients, including Apple Mail and Gmail, let you label messages as unread in bulk. You just need to use the Apple Mail mark as unread or the Gmail mark as unread option with multiple emails selected.
