Providing an unseen message count across devices

Embodiments are directed to providing an indication of unseen email messages to a mobile device user, to establishing an unseen email message count and to maintaining a consistent unseen email message count across multiple mobile devices. In one scenario, a computer system receives subscription data that subscribes a user to email push notifications. The subscription data includes a token ID and a timestamp. The computer system determines that a new email message has arrived at the user's inbox and accesses the user's email inbox to determine the number of unseen email messages (which includes the number of email messages that have been received at the user's inbox and have not been viewed or marked as read using another email client since the time listed on the timestamp). The computer system also sends a push notification with the number of unseen email messages to each of the user's subscribed mobile devices.