Managing Badges On Your Mac, iPhone and iPad

Badges are the red dots with numbers in them you see in the Dock on your Mac and over App icons on your iPhone or iPad. You can hide them on an app-by-app basis and something customize what they represent.

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Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let me show you how to manage the badges in the Dock on your Mac and also on the Home screen icons on your iPhone and iPad.
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So what are Badges? Well, if you go to the Dock on your Mac you can see them right here. I actually have one here for Messages, another in Mail, and one in Reminders. This is a little red dot at the top right hand corner of the icon for an app. It usually has a number in it. Sometimes it's just the red dot. What this means is the app wants your attention. There's a notification that you haven't seen yet or at least you haven't acknowledged. 
So for instance if I go into Reminders here I can see under Scheduled I do have a reminder here and that is why I've got a 1 here for Reminders. If I were to do something with this, like say say it is completed, then you can see it goes away. In Messages you can see I've got one unread message here which is why I've got the 1 there. In Main you can see I've got an unread message there as well. 
Now Badges can be great because they draw your attention to an app where there is something you may need to do without you having to open the app to check. However, not all badges are good. Sometimes you'll get badges for say Music apps or things that you just don't really care about those notifications and they can be a little annoying and distracting. It's easy to turn them off. All you need to do is go into System Preferences and look for Notifications & Focus. Then look for the app that has the badge. So, for instance, if I wanted to not have these little badges here for Messages I can go down to Messages and in the Settings here there's Badge App Icon.   If I turn that Off you can see the badge is no longer there. Turn it back On again and it's back. You can do that for any app you've got here. So you could preemptively go through all these and decide whether or not the Badge App Icon is something that you want. 
Now one of the main app that shows you these is the Mail app. You actually have some more options here for Mail. In fact, any third party app can really add all sorts of options for you under Preferences for that app if the developer wants. In this case, Apple the developer of Mail, has given some options right here. If you're using an app, say a third party mess messaging app, you might be able to find some options inside that app's preferences as well. Here in Mail, under General, we've got Dock Unread Count. For some reason it doesn't use the name Badge here. But you can decide where the count comes from. In this case it is sent to Inbox Only. But if I set it to All Messages you can see it changes to 4. I actually have some Unread messages in other Mailboxes here. 
But you can highly customize this by choosing a Smart Folder. So here I have one Smart Folder called Today and I can choose that and it will show 1 because that is only messages from today. I could create a new Smart Mailbox and call that whatever I want. Like let's say Last 30 Days and set it to Date Received is in the last, say, 30 days and then I will see that come up as an Option here. Now the Unread count will reflect what is unread in that Smart Mailbox. 
So you can do all sorts of things. Like you can have From, Contains, and only have, say, your company domain there. You can only have it be from a specific account. You can use All or Any here to further customize this and create a Smart Mailbox that only has the most important things in it. Then set that for the Dock unread count meaning that you'll only see a number that reflects what you really need to pay attention to. 
Now for other 3rd party apps it may be much simpler. It might just give you the option to turn it On or Off or include one category or another. Note that some apps will show the badge here only if they are running. Notice Messages is not running right now. It's not open and it shows me I have one unread message. Mail shows I have one unread but if I Quit Mail I don't get any badge here at all. Mail has to be running.
You also have Badges on your iPhone's Home screen. Any icon can have a badge. There's one for Mail there, Reminders, even at the bottom here for Messages. You can control whether or not they show up in the same way. So I can go to Settings and then look for Notifications. Then if I go to the app, for instance let's go to Reminders here, I can see badges right here and I can turn that Off. Now you can see that the badge for Reminders is gone. 
Now note that you don't have the fine tuning in the Mail App on the iPhone or iPad like you do on the Mac. But third party apps may offer that in their own settings or sometimes in the Settings app as well. So that is how you handle Badges on your Mac and on your iPhone or iPad. Hope you found this useful. Thanks for watching.

Managing Badges On Your Mac, iPhone and iPad

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