I sit in front of a Mac all day (like you probably do), so I rely on notifications a lot, especially to communicate with co-workers, friends, and family. The problem I’ve been having, however, is that the Messages app often fakes me out with phantom unread messages, leaving me frustrated and confused.
Here’s what happens: The Messages icon in the Dock shows a red “1” badge, indicating that there’s a new message. But when I open Messages, there’s nothing new, and worse, the badge won’t go away. So I go back to work for a while, pull up the Dock, see the badge (again), and think I have a new message (again). The badge usually goes away when I restart my Mac, but that’s not something I like to do all that often.
At first, I found the way to get rid of the badge accidentally. After it popped up again, I accidentally right-clicked on the app icon in the Dock (with two fingers on the trackpad, right-click or Control-click on a mouse), which opened up the pop-up options menu. under the New Message option at the top of the menu was a tally of my messages with a notification that one was unread. I clicked it, and a blank conversation appeared that was apparently tricking the app into thinking I had an unread message. I deleted it and the badge disappeared.
Foundry
But then that fix stopped working. So I had to resort to another fix that isn’t so convenient, but it does work. It involves syncing Messages with iCloud. HEre’s what to do:
- Open System Settings and click on your Apple Account at the very top of the left column.
- In the main window, click on iCloud.
- Click on Messages.
- Click on Sync Now.
Foundry
This performs a Message sync with iCloud and it should clear up the phantom badge. It’s not really a fix for my problem–there’s clearly a bug in Messages on my Mac that’s causing this—but until an update fixes it, I can at least clear the phantom badge and get back to work.
Today I Learned is a Macworld column that spotlights lesser-known but useful tips and tricks for Apple users. If you have any ideas for future columns, send an email to michael_simon@idg.com.