Prevent accidental mark-as-read

[whereswaldon]

When going through my inbox, I like to filter by unread messages and then take action on each message or thread. However, when I select some messages and (for example) archive them, they disappear and the message beneath them in the list becomes selected. This message is then marked as read because it has been selected, despite the fact that I never actually deliberately interacted with it as a user. This sometimes makes me miss emails because they get marked as read without me ever reading them.

I think this could be fixed by ensuring that changing the selected message as a result of the current selection disappearing does not count as "reading" a message.

[Jon]

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[MattAuSupport]

You are aware I assume that the mark as read timing is a user customisable setting  and setting the value to 999 will essentially require manual marking of a message as read.

[whereswaldon]

I am aware of the setting, but I don't think it really solves this use case. If the setting were "automatically mark messages as read when displayed by direct user interaction" then I'd be happy. The problem is when a message gets displayed as a consequence of a user interacting with a different message. The user didn't deliberately display the new message, and thus it shouldn't be marked as read unless the user does interact with it.

I really like that messages are marked as read instantly, but that only works well if acting on one message doesn't mark another message as read. I reported this issue because I was going through some mail, archiving it, and each time I archived a message it would mark the message underneath it in the list as read because the list would automatically display that message when the message I archived disappeared. I had to keep un-marking-as-read, and it was a very frustrating UX.