Gmail - Mark Spam Messages as Read

I had mentioned in an earlier post that I was mildly frustrated by the "new spam messages" counter in Gmail, mostly because I mistook it for the "new inbox messages" counter in my peripheral vision. Before my hard drive crash, I used a Firefox plug-in called Greasemonkey to hide the counter. This solution turned out to be inelegant when I realized that at work, at school, and on any computer other than my own I would still be visually assaulted by that silly counter. I decided then and there that there must be a better way.

Fortunately for me, there was. I had previously tried to go about using the remarkably versatile Gmail filters to mark all spam messages as read, but lacked an adequate description of what messages to mark. A closer look into Gmail search semantics revealed that I could use the keywords "in:spam" to refer to the all messages in my spam folder. Knowing this, I set up the following filters:

• Has the words: in:spam
• Doesn't have: my name, my school, my work, etc.
• Do this: Mark as read

This filter simple and efficiently hides all new spam messages, while still alerting me when potential non-spam messages have been blocked. If you're as fussy as I am when it comes to Gmail, I hope that this little trick comes in handy.