Web Gmail shows message as starred even after Apps Script unstars it

Question

OK, I think web Gmail is being screwy. I run a Google apps script that in part adds my \"To-do\" label to any thread I manually star, then archives and unstars it. A snippet

Answer 1

I'm having a similar problem. I have enabled a superstar, the green-check. I manually set them.

My script finds the relevant threads using "l:^ss_cg" in a search. It finds the starred email, sends a copy of the email somewhere, and then does the unstar.

Afterward, in the web gmail, if i search for the same message again, it shows up with a green star visually, but if I hover over the star icon, it shows 'not starred'.

However, if I run the script again, the thread is found using the search. It doesn't send another copy of the email, however, because I have a check for ".isStarred()" before it sends a copy of the specific email. I have also been able to reduce the number of threads it double-checks by adding a .hasStarredEmails() check to the thread before it starts looking at individual emails.

Doing a search in the web interface for has:green-check reveals only the emails it should.

There is something about .unStar() that doesn't work properly, I think.

I had considered trying to remove the star at the thread level by removing the ^ss_cg label, but that won't work because there is no way to get a GMailLabel object to send to the function.

Answer 2

This display issue is caused because you do not force Gmail to update the message with a call to refresh() after your call to unstar().

Per documentation of GmailMessage#refresh():

Reloads this message and associated state from Gmail (useful in case the labels, read state, etc., have changed).

messages[i].unstar().refresh();

Should be sufficient to inform Gmail of the new starred status.

Alternately, a batch call to modify the messages will be more efficient in terms of quota usage:

var toUnstar = [];
threads.forEach(function (thread) {
  thread.getMessages().forEach(function (message) {
    if (message.isStarred()) {
      toUnstar.push(message);
      ...
    }
  });
});
GmailApp.unstarMessages(toUnstar);

In my sample I avoid the assumption that iterating an array is safe with for .. in.. and use the more expressive Array.forEach() to indicate that the code is something that we want to apply to every thread and every message in said thread.

Documentation on GmailApp.unstarMessages():

Removes stars from these messages and forces the messages to refresh.

Answer 3

If you refresh gmail and hover over the star, you will see that the popup says it is Not Stared. Also, this seems to be an issue when you select the star from gmail, as stars that are set by my filters work correctly when my script unstars them.