Marking only one message unread

Stream: Zulip meta

[Filippo A. E. Nuccio]

I have several DM's with people, where there is something long I still need to read (and would like to keep "unread") but many other small messages unrelated to that one, and "marking unread from here" makes really little sense, as it marks 30/40 unread messages when there is actually only one to read. Any suggestion (I know I can put this into the starred ones, but that is a chaotic folder with a lot of general "interesting" stuff, so with a different goal)?

[Johan Commelin]

In such cases, I just add a link to the message in my todo notes (outside zulip).

[Julian Berman]

Yeah, I also have given up on using mark as unread for this and shove the note in obsidian now, if I'm real lazy and just use a link to the Zulip message it's still only 10 seconds more work.

[Filippo A. E. Nuccio]

OK, thanks. But it is a bit unfortunate, I think, especially since it is a well-tested strategy to (forget to) eventually read e-mails.

[Alya Abbott]

You can do a search that just gives you that message (e.g., a unique phrase and/or filters), and mark as unread from that message in your search results.

[Filippo A. E. Nuccio]

This is a nice idea, the problem is that as soon as I access the DM stream with that person to the last message (eg. because they write me something new), everything turns to read automatically. I guess that the problem with your solution is that in a same stream, if a message at level N is read, then by default all messages at level $k\le N$ are also marked as read.

[Damiano Testa]

It would be nice if there were an option that allowed you to click on a thread and start from the latest message, rather than the first unread message.

[Damiano Testa]

So, if you marked something unread early on, it would not automatically be marked as read when you click on the topic.

[Alya Abbott]

You can turn off messages automatically marked as read, but of course that has its down sides.

[Alya Abbott]

So, if you marked something unread early on, it would not automatically be marked as read when you click on the topic.

Hmm, interesting. You'd need to make sure people don't get stuck with old unreads they can't find / that are confusing. I think message reminders (which we're likely to build soon) might be a better solution for some of the use cases here.

[Filippo A. E. Nuccio]

One option would be to have a "manual" version of being unread, which is not the default state for unread messages; so that if a user marks something unread, it puts it into this "extra-unread state" for which a manual "really-read" is necessary; and all other unread ones are automatically marked read once... read.

[Patrick Massot]

Filippo, couldn’t you use starring for this? This is assuming you don’t already use it for something else.

[Filippo A. E. Nuccio]

Yes, in principle you're right. But I'm trying to mimic the mail-like behaviour

• starred = something I might want to remember in the future (eg a useful thing, a nice trick, etc...)
• unread = something I need to answer to/I need to come back to soon

[Patrick Massot]

I understand it’s not ideal, I’m trying to find a workaround.

[Alya Abbott]

Maybe a custom labels feature would be a simpler solution for this use case than fancier unreads management.

[Filippo A. E. Nuccio]

Sure if it is easily accessible (so that one can customize their home and have a folder for each label) this would work very well.