How to Search for Unread Email in Your Gmail Inbox

My personal email account definitely got away from me over the last few months.  I went from a fairly disciplined Inbox Zero type of system to a semi-permanent state of emergency scanning.  This past weekend, I put in a couple hours and was able to reclaim my inbox and do a pretty thorough clean-up.

As I did this I was surprised to realize that Gmail does not have a one-click way to view all unread items in your inbox.  Instead, you have to enter a query in the Gmail search box to do it.

The syntax is straightforward, but I’m not sure it is formally documented anywhere, so here it is in case you ever need to use it:

label:inbox label:unread

Tagged as: gmail