How to make Thunderbird mark all new messages as read?

January 5, 2014 9:08 AM

I recently started reading all my email on my smartphone. I still want to download every message in Thunderbird on my Mac (to archive it), but I don't want to manually mark everything as read after downloading it. Is there a way to either disable the "unread" flag, or auto-mark all new messages as read when they are received?

I like Thunderbird but I'm open to switching to another client if it won't do what I need. What would you suggest? Must be compatible with Snow Leopard, and have some way to import my mail archives (just the messages, not contacts or anything else) from Thunderbird.

posted by The Winsome Parker Lewis to Computers & Internet (4 answers total)

I'd set up a filter, have it run before all other filters you may have set up, filter on your address in the 'to:' header, and have it do no other action than 'mark as read'.
posted by Too-Ticky at 10:07 AM on January 5, 2014

Brilliant! That worked like a charm. Thanks for the help!
posted by The Winsome Parker Lewis at 10:11 AM on January 5, 2014

That filter won't fire on mail you've been CCed or BCCed on. You might want to use something like the 'Delivered-To:' header instead.
posted by bcwinters at 10:47 AM on January 5, 2014

Not sure if your email provider supports it, but you might consider switching to IMAP if you're using POP to get email now. If you use IMAP on all your devices, messages will be marked as read in all mail clients when you read the message in one place.
posted by jeffch at 11:09 AM on January 5, 2014