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

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.

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.

Asking Siri to read the messages is not practical is it takes a very long time plus you have to keep saying no when Siri asks if you would like to reply to reach read message. The best solution I found is to scroll to the bottom of the messages, right down the first message (this may take a while if you have many messages), then click on the 3 dots on the top right corner and ‘Select messages’, then click on ‘Read all’ at the bottom left. Now it is important that you don’t exit the messages app immediately as that will stop the read command as soon as you exit. Your screen will freeze for sometime. After a while exit the app and check the unread message notification, you will find that all your messages have been read.

I noticed this happened 1) after I deleted messages older than 30 days on my iPad and 2) all 6 unread messages were ones I’d marked as junk on my iPhone.

Having Siri read them aloud worked; not painful for only 6, but still definitely a bug!

I just went through this with both my iPhone (27 unread) and my iPad (400+ unread).

I did the Siri thing for my iPhone and realized the "unread" messages were either part of a group chat where I had not read an earlier reply, or they were just random messages (like a random payment notification text) that wasn't being marked as unread on my phone.

For my iPad, I didn't want to do the Siri thing because there were so many unread messages and Siri reads each one out loud. It takes forever. So I went through and deleted ALL of my messages that were random appointment reminders, delivery notifications, and bill / payment notifications. This got rid of 75% of my unread messages. Then I just scrolled through and clicked on every single message. It was super annoying but got rid of them.

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!!!

I had over 1,600 unread messages, i did not have the time to listen to Siri. There is a bit of a glitch with the messages app. If you select all your messages and mark all as read, you will still see the banner with unread messages. Restart your phone, go back into messages and you will notice more unread messages. I did this but kept deleting the messages. Each time i restarted, more messages kept appearing and i kept deleting until everything was clear. Took about an hour or so but it’s the only fix i figured out. Seems like the messages app is not able to pick up all the messages in the phone and with each restart, it picks up more.

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 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.

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.

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

THIS is the most helpful answer!! Thanks a TON!

Thank you. Siri read the 5 messages I couldn’t find. I had one unread message for years.

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

Pure genius. Using Siri to read you your messages solved my issue!