Calvin Wankhede / Android Authority
TL;DR
- Gmail for Android is testing a new “mark as read” button directly within its notifications, letting users manage their inbox without opening the app.
- The feature appears to be undergoing A/B testing with a small number of users, as it’s not widely available despite being on the latest app version.
- This potential addition would bring Gmail’s Android app in line with its iOS counterpart and other email clients that already offer this convenient shortcut.
If your email inbox gets flooded with messages each day, it can be a chore to go through them all. One way to efficiently deal with this influx is to mark some emails as “read,” keeping them in your inbox without distracting you from more important matters. After all, you can often tell if an email needs your immediate attention just from the sender, subject line, and the first few lines of the message. Unfortunately, if you use Gmail for Android and want to mark an email as read, you have to open the app, as there’s no shortcut in the notification to do it. Thankfully, that could change soon.
Earlier today, X user Kurt Gomez notified us that he was seeing a “mark as read” button in his Gmail notifications. He told us that the button only appeared for one of his accounts, suggesting the feature is rolling out on an account-by-account basis. He also confirmed he’s on the latest version of Gmail for Android, version 2025.06.15. I have the same version installed, but I don’t see the “mark as read” button for any of my accounts.
Besides our tipster, we’ve only seen one other person report a “mark as read” button in Gmail. Another X user, Gilroy, also claimed to have the button but didn’t share a screenshot or specify their app version. With so few reports, it’s likely Google is A/B testing the feature with a small group of users to gauge engagement. This feature will likely be popular, however, as it’s commonly found in other Android email apps and is already available in Gmail for iOS.
If you see the new “mark as read” button in your Gmail notifications, let us know in the comments below! If you don’t have the feature yet, you could try an app called AutoNotification. It can replace Gmail’s notifications with custom ones that include a “read” button.
Otherwise, you’ll have to stick with the old methods for marking an email as read. You can either open the email directly (from either the notification or the inbox) or use a swipe gesture, provided you’ve configured that action in Gmail’s settings.
Hopefully Google will continue to add more quality-of-life features like this to the Gmail app for Android. While some of the new AI features in Gmail are nice, I’d much prefer the company work on implementing the basics, like the ability to edit filters and labels.
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