Why Don't Emails Stay "Read" In Mail?

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Level 1

14 points

Why Don't Emails Stay "Read" In Mail?

I have a MacBook Air (13-inch, 2017) running Big Sur Version 11.2.2 with Mail Version 14.0 (3654.60.0.2.21).

On every other email client I've ever used, an email is marked as "read" if I click on it in my Inbox without having to double-click the email and open it. When I do the same thing in Mac Mail, a significant number of emails revert to being "unread" after a minute or so. There are some emails that I have to click on two or three times before Mac Mail accepts them as "read" and stops marking them as "unread". I don't understand this behavior. No other email client does this. I like to have a clean Inbox but this behavior makes it more difficult to determine how many new emails I've actually received.

MacBook Air 13″, macOS 11.2

Posted on Mar 5, 2021 3:13 AM

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Answer 1

Best reply

Barney-15E

Level 10

112,752 points

Mar 5, 2021 6:26 AM in response to OrrenBoyle

What type of account is it? Perhaps it is something connected to the communication with the server.

I haven't seen any problems with read emails suddenly becoming unread.

Is it related to conversations? There is a preference to mark all messages read when opening a conversation.

It could be some corruption in the database. You could try Rebuilding the Mailbox (Mailbox menu).

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Answer 2

OrrenBoyle Author

Level 1

14 points

Mar 5, 2021 6:37 AM in response to Barney-15E

Thanks for the reply. The issue seems to be isolated to my Yahoo Mail account, but I will monitor the other email accounts that I've connected to Mail to see if the issue occurs with those accounts as well.

I'll check the settings you mentioned and will see if I can rebuild the database.

Here are the steps to reproduce:

Open Mail
Wait for messages to download
Click on a message in the "All Inboxes" list
Use the arrow keys to move to the next message in the list. Usually I start at the top and use the down arrow
Keep moving down until all messages are read
Watch the Inbox to see which messages are marked back to "unread"