Mark text messages as unread [TILTS]

Today’s Technology I’d Like to See (TILTS) is so ridiculously simple that I can’t get my head around why it doesn’t already exist.

Often, I get a text message on my smartphone at a time when I am able to read it but not able to respond immediately. I tell myself I will respond to it later but then life usually gets in the way and I forget.

To complicate matters, everything that helps me remember I have a text to respond to goes away after I read it. No more notification in my notification center, no more red badge on the messaging icon on my phone, no more bold font on the text message itself.

Be like Gmail

When this happens with email I receive in my Gmail accounts, I simply select the option on the email to “Mark as Unread”. When I do this, everything reverts back to the way it was before I read the message. In other words, the email text goes back to a bold font and my unread message count goes back up by one.

So why doesn’t this option exist for text messages? All I am asking for is a simple option that when I am reading a text message but want to respond to it later, to be able to mark the text as unread.

Who else would like this feature? Or can someone tell me about a device or a 3rd party texting app that already has this feature?

Disclaimer: Technologies presented in the Technology I’d Like To See (TILTS) series are based on my original (and sometimes delirious) thoughts. I present them here to the public only because I can not afford to implement any of them myself. If you steal borrow one of my ideas and end up filthy rich because of it, please remember where you got the idea and throw a little love my way. Something like a BMW or a big fat check would do just fine.