Option to hide sub-labels that do not have any unread messages

[macintacos]

I have a few top-level labels with many sub-labels within them. There is only an option to hide the top-level label if it's unread - the sub-labels don't seem to "inherit" this option, and there doesn't appear to be any way to change it.

Could Simplify please add an option to hide sub-labels if there are no unread messages within that sub-label? See annotated screenshot below that describes what I'm talking about here.

[leggett]

The reason Gmail doesn't offer this is the parent label would have to exist in two places:

1. once in the top for the sub-labels that have unread items
2. and again under the "More" section for all the labels that don't have unread items

So to add this, I need to decide where would the hidden labels be. Two options that come to mind:

1. You can not access them at all (this seems bad)
2. There is an added "More" drop down under the parent that when clicked shows all the labels that were hidden

Finally, two other things to consider here:

1. I don't want to add a "only show if unread" to every sub label -- I want a simple preference that is easy to understand and easy to apply
2. I don't know what the label's setting is if the parent has unread mail.

Proposed preference: Show sub-labels if unread (this will only show sub-labels if they have unread mail; only applied to labels in the top section and not labels under "More")

Thoughts?

[macintacos]

@leggett as long as I can find other labels somehow if needed, I think your proposed preference is perfectly fine for my needs. Would your solution still show the sub-labels nested under their parent if the parent label doesn't have any unread count?

[leggett]

To be consistent, I think it would hide all sub labels with no unread count regardless of the parent's state. But I would only do this for promoted labels (e.g. not the labels hidden under "More").

This is also one of those things that I might realize is a bad design once implemented.