How Do I Fix Incorrect “Unread Messages” Count in Apple Mail?

As is often in the case, there were a surprising number of changes in the transition from iOS 17 to iOS 18. What’s most surprising is how many of those changes were new app default behaviors that you then have to change to restore original behaviors. Lots of frustration for users! I have to admit, I also was quite puzzled when I noticed that the unread messages count on my iPhone’s Mail app was wrong.

But it’s not actually wrong, it’s just counting something different.

What Apple actually added with the latest update to Apple Mail is message categorization. The consequence of this is that, like Gmail and other mail services, your Apple Mail program can now differentiate between marketing messages, transactions, updates, promotions, and actual person to person messages from senders in your Contacts or address book. The latter being considered the important “Primary” messages, and that is what’s being counted in the new version of Apple Mail.

Shortcuts: What’s Being Counted | Settings > Notifications | Updating Your Preference

Of course, just because they changed it, doesn’t mean everyone actually wants it to work that way! So, the Apple engineers were smart and offered a customization setting. You can change so that your unread messages count in Apple Mail shows all unread messages regardless of categorization. Confusingly, seeing your inbox organized by categories (which you can try with the “•••” menu on the top right of the main Mail screen) has nothing to do with the Unread Messages count. Worse, it’s not easy to find this particular setting. Let’s have a look…

WHAT IS APPLE MAIL COUNTING AS UNREAD?

I’ll start on my Mac system, because it’s also Apple Mail, but it hasn’t changed to Primary unread only. In other words, right now it shows on the Dock that I have 10 unread messages:

Looking on my iPhone, however, shows a different number even though they are exactly the same messages in my inbox:

It does make one wonder what happened to the other seven messages, but they’re in the inbox, as is revealed when I look at the Mail app screen:

Worse, notice very bottom line of this display: “10 Unread”. That’s the problem. Now, let’s fix it.

FIX UNREAD MESSAGE COUNT IN SETTINGS

You can’t fix it within the Apple Mail app, like most every iPhone app, its settings are accessed from the Settings app. Launch that, then take advantage of the search feature to look for “mail”:

Quite a lot of matches! You don’t want any in the “Apps” area, however, but the “Notifications” area, so either scroll down further or just go directly to Notifications. You’ll see:

Double check that this all looks like what you prefer. Stack is where the Apple Intelligence summaries can come into play if that’s something you find intriguing and have enabled. Swipe up until you find “Mail” on the list of apps on your iPhone. Tap on “Mail” when you find it.

The very top of this screen shows “Allow Notifications” (not shown above). If you want incoming message notifications, make sure that’s set. But even with it disabled, this is where we’ll fix the unread messages badge miscount problem. Strange place to hide it, eh?

Tap on “Customize Notifications” at the bottom of this screen.

CUSTOMIZE YOUR MAIL NOTIFICATIONS

Yes, the setting we seek in this area, as is immediately obvious:

There’s the fix! Just change it from “Unread Messages in Primary” to count “All Unread Messages“. Done. You can now go back to your home screen and it’ll be fixed. Here’s what I see:

That’s it. Now that you know this is called “badge count” you can search for that next time because I have a suspicion that Apple might move this particular setting from Notifications to Mail app settings in a future iOS update.

Power User Tip: I’ve been writing tutorials for the Apple iPhone since they were first released. Please check out my extensive iPhone help area for oodles of useful content.