iPhone and iPad showing unread messages even though I’m not seeing any unread message

I had that issue, had no unread messages but still came up as 3 unread.

Easiest way to deal with this is saying ”Hey Siri” ”read my messages”.

She will read the ones that are unread that you may have missed and problem will often solve this issue.

Not as helpful though, when you suddenly have 400+ unread messages that don't show up anywhere...I've already spent over an hour having Siri read the messages to get down to 300. It's painful. It's weird too, because they just came up all of a sudden and are from at least a year ago.

AHHH IT WORKED! Thank you so much! I’ve had unread messages that were showing for months but I could never find where they were to mark them as read. I would have never thought to tell Siri to read my messages

My iPhone screen did not have a Filters option. By searching elsewhere, I found that you can go into settings and enable the option to "Filter Unknown Senders". My screen now looks like the above screen. Unfortunately I still have hundreds of unread messages that "Read All" doesn't clear. The only way I've found is listening to Siri read them for hours on end.

If your iPhone or iPad is showing an unread message badge but you're not seeing any unread messages in your inbox, it could be due to a few possibilities:

1. At times, you may have an unread message in a thread that you haven't read yet. Try opening every message thread and looking for any unread messages.
2. Check your junk folder for any unread messages. If you find any unread messages there, mark them as read. (See the pic below)
   1. 
3. If you're part of a group message, it's possible that someone in the group has sent a message that you haven't seen yet. Check the group message and look for any unread messages.
4. If you have multiple devices that are synced to the same account, it's possible that the unread message is on a device that you're not currently using. Try checking your other devices for any unread messages.
5. Try restarting your device see if it fixes the issue.

I am certain some of the above would have solved the issue stated by you.

Brilliant. This has been bothering me for months. Never thought of doing this. Thank you. I wish there was a way to tip. $10 bucks is a small price to pay for that annoying unread icon to finally be gone. You're a legend.

if you say “hey siri next message” everytime she starts reading one she will skip to the next and it will mark it as read. Makes it go slightly faster. I just did 80 in about 3 minutes.

Absolutely the best resolution I found even after searching every tech article I could stand reading & tried every single suggestion. Just make sure you go click unread messages & then undelete blocked senders if you have an excessive number before you ask Siri to dictate any that you cannot find. When I listened to mine, some were from blocked spam senders. Even if it’s a couple hours of dictation to get your message box cleared, that’s preferable to seeing the number on the message icon taunting you every day!

Thank you very much for the helpful solution!!!

My messages app was displaying a badge indicating 1 message, but when I'd open it there were none. I did a forced restart and it didn't go away. Then tried some suggestions on this page: asking Siri to read messages, looking for and deleting unread messages on other connected devices, turning iMessage on and off in settings, checking group chats, and looking in filters to see if there was a message from an unknown sender. Nothing worked, so I did another forced restart (volume up, volume down, hold power button until phone restarts and apple logo appears), and then VOILA the badge disappeared. So I would suggest trying a forced restart if other solutions aren't working - even if you tried restarting previously.

If my iPad shows 51 new text messages, you’re suggesting I have Siri read 52 messages?

Having siri read them was just not gonna suffice for my 20+ messages (I couldn’t imagine 400+ 🫠). Do this instead:

Go to Settings ➡️ Notifications ➡️ scroll to Messages ➡️ Notification Grouping ➡️ Off

So you have to read each email of e very device for it to show as "read"???

that makes no sense, and is not what I would call "syncing"

thanks for this. Just what I was looking for — after searching everywhere else

Thank you!! I’ve had these ghost messages for years and couldn’t find a way to see them much less read or delete them.

A couple of possible reasons you might not be seeing unread messages (when you see the red bubble indicating new messages and yet scrolling through your messages you dont show any in the list with blue dots):

1. Check that you may have the messages setting for filter unknown & spam senders turned on.
2. You can view different filtering options by selecting "Filters" on the top left of your messages application list of messages. Also worth mentioning is to make sure you didn't unknowingly pin the message and aren't seeing it up at the top of the list of messages.

1. 1. You should be able to select either unread messages or all messages from your list of filters. More than likely this should solve the problem you were having where you needed to ask Siri to read your messages that were not appearing where you would expect them to.