Gnus Manual. Node: Group Timestamp

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2.17.3: Group Timestamp

It can be convenient to let Gnus keep track of when you last read a group. To set the ball rolling, you should add gnus-group-set-timestamp to gnus-select-group-hook:

(add-hook 'gnus-select-group-hook 'gnus-group-set-timestamp)

After doing this, each time you enter a group, it'll be recorded.

This information can be displayed in various ways---the easiest is to use the `%d' spec in the group line format:

(setq gnus-group-line-format
      "%M\%S\%p\%P\%5y: %(%-40,40g%) %d\n")

This will result in lines looking like:

*        0: mail.ding                                19961002T012943
         0: custom                                   19961002T012713

As you can see, the date is displayed in compact ISO 8601 format. This may be a bit too much, so to just display the date, you could say something like:

(setq gnus-group-line-format
      "%M\%S\%p\%P\%5y: %(%-40,40g%) %6,6~(cut 2)d\n")
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