The present work aims to examine the effects of viscous dissipation and unsteadiness parameters on nonlinear convective laminar boundary layer flow of micropolar‐couple stress nanofluid past a permeable stretching sheet with non‐Fourier heat flux model in the presence of suction/injection variable. The unsteadiness in the flow, temperature, and concentration profile is caused by the time‐dependence of the stretching velocity, surface temperature, and surface concentration of the boundary layer flow. Similarity transformation is applied to transform the time‐dependent boundary layer flow equations into the corresponding highly nonlinear coupled ordinary differential equations with appropriate boundary conditions. The robust numerical technique called Galerkin finite element method is used to solve the obtained dimensionless governing equations of the flow. The effects of Eckert number, unsteadiness parameter, suction/injection parameter, mixed convection parameter, material parameter, Schmidt number, and couple stress parameter on linear velocity, angular velocity, temperature, concentration, local skin friction coefficient, local wall couple stress, local Nusselt number, and local Sherwood number is analyzed with the help of graphical and tabular form. Under special conditions, the present result is compared with the existing literature and revealed good agreement. Our result shows that as unsteadiness parameter boost, both heat and mass transfer rate rises. The present study has a significant application in material processing technology.