Mail in El Capitan keeps showing unread emails

Question

Mail in El Capitan keeps showing unread emails

After updating to El Capitan, Mail will routinely display a number of unread messages in my Gmail account. When I go into my Gmail inbox, the unread message number immediately vanishes (as well as the badge number in the dock). After a few minutes, the icon on the dock will show unread messages again. Enter the Gmail inbox, the indicator disappears. There is absolutely no unread mail in my Gmail. I checked on the Gmail website to be sure.

Is El Capitan messing up the IMAP syncing? I tried rebuilding the mailbox and deleting/recreating my Google account in Mail, but the problem persists. My iOS 9 devices don't have this problem, but it started on my mac immediately after updating to El Capitan. I use another IMAP email, and there is no issue. I'm interested to know what might be causing Mail to keep thinking there are unread messages, particularly from Google.

MacBook Pro with Retina display, OS X El Capitan (10.11)

Posted on Sep 30, 2015 6:06 PM

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Answer 1

Dogcow-Moof

Level 8

36,833 points

Sep 30, 2015 6:14 PM in response to RudimentaryUser

Have you tried selecting the mailbox(es) in question and rebuilding them (Mail -> Mailbox -> Rebuild)?

Sometimes the databases can get a bit off.

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Answer 2

Oct 1, 2015 4:51 AM in response to Dogcow-Moof

I sent myself an email, and then I rebuilt the mailbox like you suggested, and now it seems to be acting properly. I'll update the thread if anything changes. I guess rebuilding was the silver bullet after all. Thanks for your help! What a relief!

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Answer 3

taxer

Level 1

4 points

Oct 15, 2015 12:40 PM in response to RudimentaryUser

I have the exact same problem with my Gmail account since the update to El Capitan. Rebuilding the mailbox did not help. Any other suggestions?

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Answer 4

Oct 15, 2015 10:41 PM in response to RudimentaryUser

Same issue here. Rebuilding the mailbox didn't help (nor did sending myself a message, and then rebuilding). Always shows the same number of unread messages. As soon as I click any message in the unified inbox (doesn't matter which account it was sent to), the number disappears. After a little while (presumably while it's checking for new mail), the badge is back again.

No such issues on my iPhone or iPad (both running iOS 9).

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Answer 5

Oct 15, 2015 10:51 PM in response to RudimentaryUser

Found a solution (in this thread) that worked for me. I logged in to Gmail on the web and saw a bunch of "unread" Gtalk messages. Marking all of those "read" seems to have fixed the problem.

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Answer 6

taxer

Level 1

4 points

Oct 16, 2015 2:03 AM in response to Jason Sims

I had two really old unread Gtalk chat messages. After I marked them as "read" the problem disappeared. This looks like an Apple Mail bug to me

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Answer 7

Oct 29, 2015 9:23 AM in response to RudimentaryUser

This was happening for me too, but for a different reason. I had a folder with unread messages in it that was not visible under the Inbox folder. I have the standard iCloud account and another IMAP account. When the iCloud account is turned off, I just see the IMAP Inbox without the folder underneath it. Enabling the iCloud account makes the Inbox into a tree view that also shows the previously hidden IMAP folder.

This looks like a bug to me. The solution was to show the iCloud account, mark the messages in the hidden folder as read, and then stop routing messages to that folder. I can then hide the iCloud account again. Another solutions is to show the iCloud account, even though I am not using it.

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Answer 8

Mar 10, 2016 10:42 AM in response to tfincannon

Sorry for the huge bump, but this solved my problem. I showed over 2500 unread emails when I actually had none. I talked to an AppleCare advisor (even though my iMac is done with AC, they still will help me). He told me to go to Mail > General > Preferences and change dock unread count from all mailboxes to inbox only and to do the same with new message notifications.

It worked perfectly, didn't have to restart or anything. Hope this helps someone. Take care all.

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Answer 9

Mar 26, 2016 6:58 PM in response to RudimentaryUser

Here's how I fixed this for a phantom message:

Go to the search box at the top of the Message Viewer
Type unread, but don't hit enter
A popup will appear, and select "Message is unread"
The phantom unread message appears
Select the message
Right-click and select Mark -> As Read

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Answer 10

TLR_

Level 1

4 points

Aug 28, 2016 9:00 PM in response to RudimentaryUser

I found that when I used the gmail web client to mark a message as read, it would still show up in my "Unread" smart mailbox in Apple Mail. To get rid of these I created a folder called "temp" and dragged the problem message there. I marked it as unread and then read (not sure if this is necessary) and then dragged to back to my inbox. Afterward it didn't show up in my "Unread" smart mailbox.

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Answer 11

Nov 5, 2016 5:23 AM in response to Daniel Sonnenfeld

I had the same problem, but only had to do the first two items on your list to fix it. As soon as I typed "unread" into the search bar, the list of read-but-not-marked-read messages came up, and the mysterious unread count fixed itself.

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