Chosen Solution

My message icons says I have new messages but I don’t. I have deleted all my texts and tryed restarting my phone. I went into the app manager cleared the data and cache and that did not fix it. I can not figure it out please help it is driving me nuts.

Check the messages inside of SIM card. there should be unread message.

Look in your archives for texts.  That’s where I found my hidden notification.  I had accidentally archived a text and it was sitting there.  Once I deleted it, my notification turned off.

I had this problem and it was “archived messages” that I hadn’t read. I have no idea how they got archived. Here is how I fixed it on my ZTE: Went to Apps. Went to Messaging. Went to Archived. In there were unread archived messages that weren’t even for me (were for person who used to have my number). I deleted the messages. The phantom “new message” number went away (I was up to 4!). Hope this helps someone. Edit » Sarah (above) fixed hers in the same way I see. Thanks, Sarah!

I have found the answer hopefully!!!! I had 3 messages on my ZTE that says I have unread messages and I had indeed read them all! They are cache messages. Okay, go to the Messaging icon. Press the three dots at the top Right corner and a drop down will come down. press settings from there!! The first option is DEFAULT SMS APP.. press that and change it! I changed mine briefly to messenger. For whatever reason, this resets all of the messages thats cached under Messaging. Let it stay in the other type of messenger for about 5 mins. Actually what’s going on is someone has sent a message that’s too big to download and its caught between downloading. Okay, switch back to SMS Messaging and it will start to send those caught messages in one by one! -Hope this helps.

That occurs when you read the message when it pops up without actually selecting it you have to select it in order for the message to be considered read. Just stupid

Go in to your message setting and click the delete messages in 90days turn on then check and then turn off again. It pops the message up that you don’t have. Might be a picture or video. Mine was a picture that didn’t download.

So far nothing has helped. I just made FB messenger my default message app. Once I did that FB messenger showed me several old messages that did not load or I didn’t see. After going through and checking them, I switched back to my normal default message and it the icon was still there. I scrolled all the way to the bottom to see if anything new and the icon disappeared.

I found the problem with mine it was a hidden photo that did not download in one of the messages it does not even appear as an unread message you have to open the thread to download of the photo once I did that my indicator went back to zero on my messages

I just solved this problem. Download the message + app. It will give you an option to change your messages to their app. Once you do that, go through your texts through this app and it will have all the hidden messages in bold print like it has been unread. I opened each one. I had 5 and deleted each one. Then I undownloaded the app. Went through my regular texts and deleted unwanted messages(when you delete you’re asked to change back to your phones messaging system change it back ) once they’re deleted through your phone, I simply restarted my phone and now the message icon is clear! Hope this helps. Sounds confusing but very easy fix. So happy after months my message icon is clear.

FINALLY!! TRY THIS IF YOU STILL NEED HELP! I had this problem on my back up phone & looked for help here. The things didn’t work for me. Finally I clicked on, “mark all as read”. It worked! I have no clue what message wasn’t read because I searched & searched,but was just glad it worked. Once you click on it & they’re all marked as read,this option is no longer visable. If you don’t have any unread messages then you won’t be given this option to click on & your problem is something else. It won’t appear until it happens again & there’s unread messages. To do this click on your messages. Click on the 3 dots up in the right top corner. (or whichever corner they may appear) Click on, “mark all as read". This should hopefully fix your problem. Good luck everyone! :)

I had the same issues. I ended up switching my default message to FB messenger and it would show the messages the were unopened. I’d then switch back to text message for as defaul t.