label:unread

Unread Mail in GMail
I exclusively use GMail as my e-mail client for all my mail.  For the most part, I keep things read, responded to, up-to-date.  But occasionally, one slips through the cracks.  When this happens and I notice, it's not a big deal.  But occasionally, one gets by and it is months before I notice.  If it is recent, I can use the "All Mail" link to find it and make sure it is not important.  But there have been a few over the years that really slipped through the cracks.  

In addition, I don't delete e-mail.  Google stores it all for me.  The result here is that somewhere in my mailbox with Google there were about 130 unread mails.  As of this writing, I have 22,445 e-mails stored in my mailbox.  Going through this to find the unread mail is not feasible.  One would expect an easy way using the Google Mail interface to see this mail.  But if it exists, it is certainly not intuitive (or I am just blind to it).  

Labels
The solution to this is the Google Mail label feature.  You can assign labels to e-mails based on rules.  For example, if you e-mail me at my work e-mail it is automatically labelled as "phines@quadrus".  An easy interface is provided on the left where you can click a label and see only items that are tagged with that label.  In addition to these custom labels, there are some labels that Google manages and automatically apply to e-mails.  For example, when you click on the Inbox, you are actually just viewing e-mails tagged with the Inbox label.  The Inbox link is just a convenience, but you can also search for labels.  If you go to the search field at the top and type in "label:inbox" you get the same list of e-mails displayed as if you clicked the Inbox label on the left.

The Unread Label
There does appear to be a label called "unread" that is applied to unread e-mail.  If you go to the settings where you can manage your labels, there is a section for system labels.  However, this label is not listed.  I have no idea why.  I would expect this to be listed as an option, and default to being on.  There should, in my opinion, be a link on the left called "unread" that makes this easy.  But whatever the reason, this has not been done.

The Solution
While not exactly "user-friendly", the unread mail can be displayed.  If you go to the search field at the top and enter "label:unread" as your search term, you will see only your unread e-mail.  Hopefully Google will make this more user friendly.