We get plenty of messages throughout the day, but we don’t always want to reply to all of them. Whether you are busy or just don’t feel like replying at the moment, everyone’s got their reasons. Still, sometimes you end up opening a message, accidentally or out of choice. And now you’d like to mark it as unread so you can remember to reply to it later.

But sadly, despite rumors of the feature coming to iOS 14, it isn’t yet part of iOS. It was instead replaced by the pinning feature, which is useful in itself. Still, a lot of users were disappointed by this turn of events.

The feature to mark a message as unread is rather desirable for a lot of people. Although it doesn’t actually convert the status of the message to unread (if you have read receipts on), that’s not the point. In addition to reminding you to reply to messages, you can also use it to mark conversations to refer back to them.

There may be an option to mark an iMessage as unread, but there are a few things you can do to remind yourself of the message as if the message was unread.

Forward the Message to Yourself

You can forward the message you’d like to be reminded about to yourself. To forward the message, tap and hold the message. Few options will pop up underneath the message. Tap the ‘More’ option.

Then, tap the ‘Forward’ option in the bottom-right corner of the screen.

Enter your contact details in the ‘To’ section and forward the message to yourself.

The new message to yourself will be unread and serve as a reminder of the original message you still need to reply to.

Ask Siri to Remind You

Although you can manually set a reminder, asking Siri to do it for you is so much easier and quicker. The notion of having to set a reminder yourself is too cumbersome, but add Siri to the mix, and you’ve got a quick workaround on your hands.

With the message still open, invoke Siri by either pressing the Home button or saying ‘Hey, Siri’. Then, say ‘Remind me about this in an hour’ or whatever time frame you want to set.

A reminder for the message will be created, and you’ll get a notification when the time window is up.

While we all wait for Apple to add the feature to iOS, you don’t have to be a sitting duck. Instead of forgetting to reply to messages and running into problems it’ll inevitably create, use one of these workarounds to stay on top of your messages.