Mail app. and gmail issues

[newbie2008]

I recently am using the mail application and have one of my gmail accounts on it. so all my gmail messages are being sent to the mail app obviously. so today i decided to log into my actual gmail account on gmail.com. and i see lots of unread messages that i actually did read in the mail app on my MB. i was hoping that if i checked the mail on the mail app that it would show on my actual gmail account that it was read as well..or is that not how it works..
a little confused. and yes i am still a noob..

 

[MisterMe]

... ..or is that not how it works.. .....

No, that's not how it works.

 

[ebel3003]

Are you using POP or IMAP to log into your Gmail account? Try IMAP to see if it fixes the problem. I'm pretty sure that using POP doesn't touch any messages on the server, only downloads them, whereas IMAP will save any mailbox changes to the server.

 

[MacAodh]

It depends on how you set it up. If you've IMAP set up that should happen but I tried that way for a while and it's not all it's cracked up to be. If your using POP it will just download a copy of the message but not change anything on the gmail inbox at all. However you can set it to do that. I've mine set up to archive (take out of the inbox) and mark as read all messages that are downloaded. Much nicer i think.