How to Mark Texts Unread on Apple iPhone and iMessage
Learn how to mark messages unread, pin chats, mute threads, and more.
This is a short note with a couple of iMessage tech tips. If you have an iPhone and you suffer from not being able to reply to all your messages, this is for you. There are a few features of Apple iMessage that make organizing text threads a bit easier—here’s the secret to marking messages as unread, pinning your favorite chats, muting the noisiest threads, and the work setup I use to prevent distractions if I need to use iMessage while working.
1. Pin your key message threads
You can “pin” up to nine different chats at the top of iMessage on your phone or desktop. I use this to bookmark people I am constantly texting or threads that are currently a priority. From the community garden I work with, to different grandparents’ threads, to my daily work buddies. And, of course, the husband.
To pin messages on a desktop, right-click on the thread and click “pin” when the option pops up.
On mobile, press and hold down on the thread you want to pin. You’ll get the option to pin that thread.
2. Hide alerts from specific people or threads
I come from a family with a very robust texting culture. My siblings and I talk to each other all day long, across multiple threads. Yes, the name of one of our threads is FARTHEADS with the appropriate 💨 emoji as our group image. Just because I’m turning forty this year doesn’t mean I’ve lost access to my inner child.
Hiding alerts on specific threads is a feature I use all the time. I mute specific threads when I know I’ll need to talk to some folks throughout the day but I want to pause the other channels—the ones where we’re discussing the hike we’re doing that weekend, or the elaborate costumes required for spirit week next week. I’ll mute my best friends (and they know this!) when I’m heads down for work. Usually I type, “Alright, muting this thread until tonight, love you! bye!”
3. Mark messages as unread
Ack! Read a message and know you’re going to forget about it? While this is not a complete strategy (ideally, this would become a task in a reminders app or my project manager), sometimes it’s easiest to mark it as unread so you can come back to it later.
NOW YOU CAN MARK MESSAGES UNREAD.
To mark as unread on a desktop app, right-click to get a drop-down menu.
On a mobile device, it’s hidden—swipe right to get a blue side banner with a check mark symbol to push the thread back to unread.
4. Open single threads in a new window
If you’re working on a desktop and you don’t want to get sucked in by distractions, but you need to talk to one specific person about something, you can double-click on a specific thread and open it as a new window.
Because of the volume of school messages, kid messages, scheduling messages, family messages, random friend blurts, if I look at my main inbox, I’ll get swallowed up into replying to thousands of messages.
So in focus mode, I’ll take one thread—for example, in the image below, I’m co-working with a friend on a talk I’m giving on creative calendar planning—and I opened just a single window for dialogue without going down the texts rabbit hole.
Advanced tip: I use several different virtual desktop screens on my Apple desktop to organize my work by chrome profile and user. I keep iMessage and my personal email account on a separate screen entirely, so I have to double-swipe right and left to toggle back and forth between user setups. With iMessage, I can drag the single thread to my workspace and leave the main chat back in the other desktop space for my breaks, aka, my procrastination and between-pomodoro times.
What other apple thread or text thread tips do you have?
Before I close, one final caveat.
Just because I’ve shared these tips does not mean I will reply to your messages promptly or at all. I still believe that there are too many messages to answer in one lifetime, and letting things drift off into the ether is a perfectly fine strategy. Right now, I answer emails on a 7 day turnaround, if not longer. Some text messages take 30 days to reply to. I have so many threads with friends where we text back and forth once a month and say constantly, “what, how did another month go by?” It is what it is.
These tips, and any other tips out there, are to support you in achieving the goals you’ve set out for yourself—like being a kind friend, achieving a work goal, getting more rest—NOT to support the invisible default goal of answering every message you’ve ever gotten forever until you die. There’s a difference.
What other apple thread or text thread tips do you have?
Leave a note in the comments.
— Sarah Peck
CEO & Founder
Startup Parent
I love these shortcuts.
I actually took an online college course about 15 years ago, just with the sole purpose of learning shortcuts on my desktop/laptop.
Saves me SO my time and anxiety.