How to mark all Messages as read at once on your iPhone or iPad

BY Gautam Prabhu

Published 23 Mar 2015

If you’ve got a lot of unread iMessages or SMS then there is an easy way to mark all them as unread at once, rather than opening them individually.

It is not obvious so you may have missed it. Follow these steps to mark all the iMessages or SMS as read in the Messages app on your iPhone.

How to mark all iMessages or SMS as read in Messages app on your iPhone:

  • Open the Messages app on your iPhone or iPad.
  • The number of unread messages will be displayed at the top in brackets [eg. Messages (3)].
  • Tap on the Edit button in the top left corner.

Mark Messages unread

  • You will now notice that it will display Read All option at the bottom left corner.

Mark Messages unread

  • Tap on Read All to instantly mark all messages as read.

So if you’ve got a lot of unread messages, then you can selectively check the important ones individually, and mark the remaining as read in one-go using this method.

Some of you must be wondering if there was a similar way to delete all messages at once. Unfortunately, iOS doesn’t offer an option to delete all messages in a similar way. You have to either delete the messages individually, or change the settings to automatically delete the messages after 30 days or 1 year.

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