Unread mail badge not updating

Well.....It was wishful thinking that this would STAY working when using iCloud mail.

Everything was working perfectly for about two months, and without me changing any settings, one of the recent iOS updates (or maybe the recent Mail update in OSX Mavericks) broke it.

Despite having everything turned on to do so and having it work for months, after upgrading to iOS 7.0.4 when it came out, I no longer get email banner alerts in my lock screen and the email count badge is always wrong.

I just can't believe that Apple can't get this right. All of the resources they have at their disposal, and they can't get email badge counts and banners to work correctly and consistently??? Wow....It's really quite embarrassing for them.

I'll probably be switching back to Gmail again because this broke when using iCloud after I upgraded to iOS 7.0.4. I didn't change one setting for months.....and it suddenly just stopped working.

My iCloud mail now works fine from iPhone to Mac, but not from Mac to iPhone: If I open a message on my iPhone, it immediately changes to read on my Mac, but if I first open a message on my Mac (I can even delete it), I can wait all day, but it will never change to read on my iPhone if I don't open the message.

I agree Ernst....This is the same behavior that I see now.

I was really disapointed to see this situation re-appear because up until one of the recent updates to Mavericks or iOS, everything was working beautifully for me using iCloud mail across my Mac, iPhone and iPad. Everything was updating properly all the time, badge counts were always correct, etc. I was happy to have been free of Gmail.

I'm not sure what broke it.....but there was an update to Mavericks Mail application and there have been several updates to iOS 7 in the past weeks. Somewhere along the line of those updates it stopped working and now I have the same old crummy iCloud mail badge situation again.....and what's worse is, as you noted, the emails themselves are not updating until you go into the app. So the situation has actually gotten worse than just the badges not updating.

It's a horrible day-to-day scenario to have this problem. Incredibly inconvenient and a lot of wasted clicks, and it makes the Apple services look really silly. If it's not fixed quickly then I will probably switch my forwarding around once again and go back to using Gmail until it's fixed again.

I would really love to see this issue adressed. How is it possible that APPLE can't provide a comfortable email solution?!

After buying a new iPhone 5S I'm trying to switch from gmail to icloud, but I'm still not clear what is worse - gmail lack of push, or icloud's lack of sync? I think gmails sync is not working corectly lately as well, so I think I'll go with iCloud. But then there's outlook, which works perfectly, but I have never used it more, and gmail and iCloud are my "live" accounts. I wish I could be happy with Apple as before...

I just upgraded to Mavericks and now show "23" unread items, but all items are read! Attempting to create a new Smart mailbox doesn't work -- nor did my effort to ensure all items are in fact read when viewing my account through a webmail browser.

What's the story? How can we reset this? is there a p-list that can be deleted/restored?

Found this on Apple StackExchange and it worked for me

I fixed this for my smart mailboxes (Mail.app v7.0 1822) by following these steps:

1. Open a terminal
2. Re-index Spotlightsudo mdutil -E /

I suspect this is related to Mavericks improvements in Spotlight, as it now indexes Mail.app messages much better than in previous releases.

Yesterday, after doing all of the latest iOS and OSX updates, I switched my mail back to iCloud.....and the same pathetic problem still exists. My iPhone unread message badge count is still wrong....When I read iCloud email on my Mac, the badge count on my iPhone never updates unless I manually enter the Mail app on my iPhone.

So.....it's the same old problem as we roll into another year, so I switched back to forwarding all my mail to Gmail and I'm using my Gmail account on my Mac and iOS devices and all counts are synchronizing perfectly and instantly. 😟

The only hope that I see is that maybe Apple will address this problem for iCloud mail with the release of iOS 8 and the next Mac OSX version. Until then....I'll have to stick with Gmail on my iPhone and Mac.

Ugh, scratch that, the ghost unread reappeared!

Why oh why has mail.app been such a pile in the last year or so.... i'm going back to Sparrow

I have the same issue: my badge is completely out of sync with what is going on. It doesn't report gmail received (even though the unread flags in my inbox are accurate) and it has now started showing counts for flagged junk mail again. It's a hot mess.

I'm an Apple exclusive but it completely confounds my why Apple still cannot get mail and calendaring fundamentals working effectively. They are staples! eg:

- About 75% of the time, I have to Force Quit Mail (on both MacPro and Macbook Pro)

- Calendaring reminders have a mind of their own. I cannot seem to turn them off

- Contacts are a mess, especially with Gmail accounts

- ...

same here with icloud. ipad counter badge and even mail itself will not update unless i open the mail app on ios. background refresh and notification center and push are enabled.

An update...I tried switching back to iCloud mail with the release of iOS 8 to see if this problem has been fixed. It has not. Same problems, same behaviors.

In addition, I noticed that iCloud mail doesn't even clear notifications properly from my iPhone when I read a mail on my Mac. The notification stays on my lock screen. When using Google, they clear out automatically.

I'm starting to think that somehow my original Apple ID that I created years ago when they still had the old cloud infrastructure, architecture, mail accounts, etc, in use was corrupted along the way somehow and that the root of the problem might be with the Apple ID itself somehow. I simply can't believe that every person that uses iCloud mail is having this problem. If so, they would likely fix it because the public outcry would be loud and clear. But it seems to be isolated to only certain people.....and I would be very interested to try a test of creating a completely new Apple ID from scratch and then trying iCloud mail to see if it works properly.

Has anyone tried this with a brand new Apple ID to see if the problem still happens?

I have the same problem since I got an ipad and an iphone.

I can't believe that Apple can't fix this. I started using MobileMe, and had a @mac email address, which became @me and now @icloud...

I am calling Apple support tomorrow. I'll let you know how things go. I can't stand having to see the badges of the emails that I have already deleted...

Really frustrating.

I'm having the same exact issue.

10.10.3 and iOS 8.3

I have a funny feeling (but I have no facts to base this on) that this has something to do with whether or not an account originated from back in the days of MobileMe and got carried through various iterations of what is now the iCloud service.....I simply can't believe that all new iCloud accounts are experiencing this problem.

I'm tempted to create a brand new iCloud account now and see if this works on that pristine account, but I just don't have the energy.... 😟