If they're really all read, it's a bug. One thing that often works is to just kill the app.

In settings go to messages, notifications and unclick badges.

You may have unknown senders filtered so you wouldn’t see these messages unless you looked for them. When in messages, do you have the world “Filters” in the upper left corner? If so, click that and check for the six unread messages.

What works for me are these options in this order.

Edit. Select Messages. Select All. Read All.

If you still have the notification badge and you read/delete all messages. Restart your iPhone. Possible visual glitch.

Ask Siri to read all of your unread messages.

Siri will respond saying you don't have any, and the badge will clear.

This is the solution! Scanning, looking for filtered, rebooting... nothing worked except this. And, the messages were a couple notifiers that looked read.

Thanks, everyone!

Thanks! That didn't work but commanding Siri to read them did... it was a hidden notifier that wasn't showing anywhere as unread.

Maybe it’s unsend messages

Did you check "messages from unknown sender?" every time I have had this happen, there were spam messages in the messages from unknown sender section.

I have this issue with Facebook Messenger for some reason. All my messages will be read but it'll still show I have unread messages. It'll usually just randomly go away after opening and closing the app several times. Still pretty annoying to have to do that.

Reboot would work as well.

True, but that's pretty user-hostile. A reboot would be the attempt after killing and restarting the app didn't work.

Nice  phone there.

That’s such a weird way of clearing unread messages, lol.

https://preview.redd.it/xke09mzd5gqa1.jpeg?width=326&format=pjpg&auto=webp&v=enabled&s=1c0757dedd90ceff76399d488b1c1c6f05b2432f

Thank you!

I am still not able to clear 197 messages but all are read and I cannot see under any tab which is unread but when I ask siri, there are 42 conversations which are unread. Any help for this?

If the Siri trick fails, try turning the phone off then dunk it into lukewarm water and turn it on while submerged. Keep under water until Apple icon has been on screen for 15 seconds. If it doesn't work, or the Apple icon doesn't stay on for the full 15 seconds, try the process again. It's called a wet reset. It'll clear the PRAM cache from the solenoid boot disk and you'll be good to go.

Check if all lines is selected.

C.I.A.L.I.S.

Resetting settings and restoring the firmware are invasive, simply restarting the phone isn’t.

While that's true, I never suggested that. You're responding to the wrong person.

Only way that worked for me when I had that same bug

BTW, u/DarthMauly, I am still happy you solved this. I don't use Siri enough and no amount of hunting found this.

I had that, powered off the phone, powered it on and had more unread messages. I had to do that 2 or 3 times before I got them all.

This is brilliant! Thank you!

select all messages and list them as read, hopefully that clears them.

If only I can use this feature on Instagram 😭

a few things to try

1. try selecting all and then "mark as read"

2. try going into messages settings and disabling "filter unknown senders" then trying #1 again

3. restart the phone

4. notification settings -> messages -> disable badge app icon

definitely won't have any issues there