Summary: Want a quick way to access all your Unread messages in Gmail? The necessary parts are already there, just hidden away. Some assembly required. No batteries necessary. I often find myself typing “is:unread” in the search box at Gmail.
It’s faster and easier than loading several different Labels which only have a few unread messages in them.
Naturally, I wished for an easier way to do this than to have to keep typing “is:unread” all those times.
The first thing I did was make a TextExpander shortcut so that when I type “/un” I get “is:unread”, so I don’t have to worry about making typo when I go to the search field.
Which is good… but what would be even easier is if I could make a Filter that would automatically put all my unread messages in it.
That would have the bonus of being something I could use over IMAP.
So I thought I would try something, and I created a new filter with just one criteria:
Would it work? I had no idea, but “nothing ventured, nothing gained” my mother always says.
Danger! Danger!
Well, Gmail did not like my idea, and responded “Hey, buster, just what do you think you’re doing, using our search booleans as a filter? Knock that off right now, or you’ll go to bed without dinner.”
Ok, they were a little more formal:
“Don’t do that! It won’t work!”
I assumed this meant that it would catch all the current messages which were unread, but would not automatically be updated in the future.
I was wrong.
It showed me all of the current unread messages, and it keeps showing me all of the unread messages.
So it works.
Sorta (read on)
The only downside is that once a label is applied to a message, Gmail doesn’t automatically remove it, so even after the message is read, it will still have the whatever label you use for unread messages, which isn’t a big deal, I’ll just select all and “Remove Label” occasionally.
And, of course, it could break at any time, but I would assume that Google would move in the direction of giving us more functionality, not less so if it breaks, I hope it is because they came up with a better way.
Then I noticed something odd.
Well, This is Odd…
While I was testing this, I discovered something curious.
I tried to call my custom label “Unread” because, well, it’s the most logical/obvious choice.
Except that Gmail wouldn’t let me use “Unread”:
Well, that’s strange. “Unread” is a “system specific name” eh? So it already exists? But I don’t see it in my list of labels.
You don’t suppose that it’s there just hidden, do you?
Well, thanks to the practice of Using Sane URLs (a miracle more people should get into) I just went ahead and tested it:
https://mail.google.com/mail/#label/Unread
and…. it works it works it works!
But it doesn’t show up in my regular list of labels!
Enter The Labs
At this point I thought I was sunk, having a cool-but-useless discovery on my hands.
Then I remembered Google Labs, specifically something called “Quick Links” which is described thusly:
Adds a box to the left column that gives you 1-click access to any bookmarkable URL in Gmail. You can use it for saving frequent searches, important individual messages, and more.
“Any bookmarkable URL” includes the “System Specific But For Some Reason Hidden” Unread box.
So go to Google Labs, enable “Quick Links” (it’s currently the 2nd one from the top), and then go to the hidden Google ‘Unread’ label and click “Add Quick Link”.
You can call it whatever you want (may I suggest something creative like “All Unread”?) and enjoy.
Oh, and it is automatically updated when you read messages, so there’s nothing cluttering up that Label once you’ve read the messages in it.
This is Not A Fix, It’s a Workaround
Sadly, this still won’t show up when you are using IMAP. For that you’ll need to create a hacky-label like I created.
Ironically, it also doesn’t show an unread message count. (I assume that’s a limitation of Quick Links.)
The only real solution for this is for Google to make the “Unread” label appear as a regular label.
Since it is already there just hidden, I have no idea why it isn’t more readily accessible, preferably up there right underneath “Inbox” or somewhere up there with the “Special” built-in labels.
Must be because Gmail is still in beta.