Stop leaving your friends on read by marking the text as unread: Video

We’ve all been there. Someone sends us a text while we’re in the middle of something else. We glance at it and tell ourselves we’ll respond later. The next thing we know, it’s been days and we never replied. Oops!

A visual cue is one of the best ways to remind us when we unlock our devices. So the next time you need to remember to reply to someone, take a couple of seconds and mark the text as unread. Or type a text now and schedule it to send later! 

Watch this video to see how to mark a text as unread.

How to mark a text message as unread

There are two ways to mark a text unread on your iPhone: 

1. Hard press on message in the inbox and tap on Mark as Unread.
2. Swipe the message in your inbox to the right and tap the blue message bubble.

The red notification bubble will appear on the Messages app but will not appear as a notification on your lock screen. 

If the person you’re texting has read receipts turned on, it will still show that you've read the message, even if you mark it as unread on your phone.

These steps also work if you’re trying to mark a message as unread in WhatsApp. 

If you have an Android, you can turn on reply reminders. The feature will prompt you to respond to the messages you haven’t replied to or show you outgoing messages you haven’t followed up on.

The feature is part of the Nudges setting and is turned on by default. To turn it off or check your setting:

1. Tap your profile photo in the top right. 
2. Tap Messages settings.
3. Tap Suggestions.
4. Tap Nudges. 

The nudge will appear in the message thread and your inbox.

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How to pin a text message thread

You can also pin messages to the top of your inbox as a reminder to respond or to quickly access the people you text most often.

Just hard-press on the conversation and tap Pin. Those people will then appear as larger circles at the top of your messages inbox.