Understanding the "read" vs. "unread" status

Mark as "read" vs. archive

Archiving instead of marking emails as read is the Front-recommended way to manage your inbox. Once no immediate action is required on a message, simply click on the Archive icon at the top of the conversation. This way, you'll be able to focus on only seeing the conversations that need your attention, rather than having to look through a long list of both read and unread conversations.

Conversations will automatically unarchive and appear in your Inbox when there's a new message or comment. For more information on archiving, see How to archive a conversation.

Read/Unread counters

By default, your individual inbox counters (the number next to Inbox in your personal workspace) are set to represent the number of open conversations. This is because we generally recommend an archiving workflow instead of marking your conversations as read.

However, you can switch your individual inbox counters to represent the number of Unread messages. For instructions, see How to change your individual inbox counters.

Marking conversations as "read" or "unread"

Although we recommend using the archiving method above, you can still mark messages as read or unread in Front.

Marking a conversation as read or unread applies only to you. This means that if you've marked a conversation as read, it will appear as read in your view, but your teammates will still see the conversation as unread.

Unread messages in Front have a blue dot to the left of the message, and have a faint blue background.

Once you've read a message in Front, the blue dot disappears, and its background changes to white. A conversation is marked as read once you've selected the conversation and read it, or by clicking the blue dot to the left of an unread message.

To mark as unread, hover over the left of the conversation, and a blue dot will appear; click it to mark the conversation as unread.

Marking Multiple Messages as Read or Unread

Select the messages you wish to change status for by holding the Shift key and using your down arrow on the conversation list. Once selected, click on the 3 dot option menu from the conversation view within Front:

Filtering for unread messages

To filter an inbox by unread messages, click the search bar, then select Unread to pull up a list of your unread messages in that inbox, or in all folders. You can also use the advanced search filter is:unread to refine your search to unread messages only.

Note on Gmail inboxes:

For individual inboxes set up via Gmail, reading a message in Front will mark it as read in Gmail. 

For shared inboxes set up via Gmail, messages are marked as read in Gmail only when they are assigned to someone in Front.