Message reactions, search, and what's in your inbox

This is the companion to Messaging other members. It covers the tools you use to live in your inbox at /chats day to day: finding old conversations, reading the unread badge, and reaching someone from wherever you already are.

Searching your messages

The inbox has a search that looks across all of your conversations at once. It matches on three things:

• The other actor's name or handle. Type a person's or organization's name to jump to your thread with them.
• The text of messages. The search reads inside your messages (a fast full-text index), so you can find a conversation by a word someone actually said in it.
• The context label. If a conversation was about a specific animal, listing, application, or sale, that subject is searchable too.

A few practical notes: search needs at least 2 characters to run, results are the matching conversations with the matched message highlighted, and there is an unread-only filter for narrowing to conversations you have not read. The implication: you can find "that conversation about the silver girl" months later by typing the animal's name, even if you have forgotten who it was with.

The unread badge and count

• What drives the number: every conversation that has messages you have not opened counts as one unread. Opening a conversation clears its unread the moment you view it.
• One number everywhere: the badge on the inbox tab and the app's global unread indicator both read the same count.
• The cap does not cap the badge: the inbox list shows your most recent conversations (the 50 most recent), but the badge is your true total even if you have more unread than that. So the number you see is real, not clipped to the visible list.
• What it means for you: the badge is a trustworthy at-a-glance count of conversations waiting on you, and clearing it is as simple as opening each one.

Reactions, recapped

From Messaging other members: you can react to any message with up to 4 different emoji of your own, and tapping a reaction's count shows who reacted. It is the fastest way to acknowledge a message without typing.

Reaching a conversation from anywhere

You do not have to open the inbox and hunt for someone first. A Message button appears in the places you already are:

• On a profile: a person's or an organization's profile has a Message action that opens (or reuses) your single thread with them.
• From a listing, animal, transport, application, or sale: starting a message from one of those carries the context chip for that subject into the conversation, so the thread is labelled with what it is about from the first message.
• What it means for you: because there is exactly one thread per pair, starting from a profile or a listing never makes a duplicate. It drops you into your existing conversation (or starts the one you do not have yet), already on-topic.

Messaging is one of a few ways trust shows up between members; reviews are another. See Leaving a review.

Related information

• Messaging other members

Updated on: 23/06/2026