Mac Mail App - Lot's of flagged emails: getting rid of it

Question

I recently bought a MacBook and now I am trying to understand how to use the native email client. I use only an iCloud and a Gmail account to handle email, and most of my important emails are in Gmail.

After adding both accounts and waiting for the mail app to sync, I ended up with a "Flagged" folder full of messages (~450). There's a count badge on the right side of the folder name.

How do I get rid of the counter for the "Flagged" folder? Am I suppose to de-flag all messages or delete them? Am I using the Flagged folder in a wrong way?

Answer 1

Stars on Gmail are flags on Mail app. You can go ahead and remove the flags if you wish; the Flagged folder is a smart folder and removing the flags or stars will empty it. Or you can just leave them there, it depends on what you used Stars for.

I wouldn't delete them though; while usually items in folders are just tags in Gmail, I'm not sure if deleting mail in folders will result in just removing the tag and keeping other copies on their folders, or deleting them for good; it will probably depend on your settings.