Mark an email read or unread, starred or unstarred
Provide isRead, isStarred or both, as booleans. A body with neither is rejected rather than treated as a no-op. The change is idempotent, pushed to open inbox windows in real time, propagated to the provider in the background for the read state (the star stays local), and delivered to email.updated webhooks.
Inconsistency: an unknown id returns 404 NOT_FOUND here, while GET /emails/{emailId} returns EMAIL_NOT_FOUND.
Authorization
apiKey Your 48 character Emelia API key, the same as for the Emelia API, sent as is (a Bearer prefix is tolerated). Create it at https://v3.emelia.io/settings/api. Disabling a key can take up to 5 minutes to apply to the Inbox API.
In: header
Path Parameters
Inbox id of the email (from GET /emails, webhooks...).
Request Body
application/json
TypeScript Definitions
Use the request body type in TypeScript.
At least one of the two fields.
Response Body
application/json
application/json
application/json
application/json
application/json
application/json
application/json
application/json
curl -X PATCH "https://example.com/emails/cmemacme0000000000000001" \ -H "Authorization: YOUR_API_KEY" \ -H "Content-Type: application/json" \ -d '{ "isRead": true }'{ "email": { "id": "cmemacme0000000000000001", "mailboxId": "cmbxacme0000000000000001", "folderId": "cmfdacme0000000000000001", "messageId": "<CAJacme.0001@mail.example.com>", "threadId": "18c2acme0001", "subject": "Re: Partnership with Acme", "from": { "email": "jane.roe@example.com", "name": "Jane Roe" }, "to": [ { "email": "john.doe@acme.com", "name": null } ], "cc": [], "bcc": [], "date": "2026-10-08T09:12:44.000Z", "snippet": "Thanks John, could we schedule a call next week?", "isRead": true, "isStarred": false, "isDraft": false, "hasAttachments": true, "attachments": [ { "filename": "brief.pdf", "size": 48213, "mimeType": "application/pdf" } ], "inReplyTo": "<20261008091500.acme01@acme.com>", "references": [ "<20261008091500.acme01@acme.com>" ], "labels": [ "INBOX" ], "waitingForReply": false, "isAutoReply": false, "isAutoForward": false, "scheduledStatus": null, "scheduledSendAt": null }}