How to Hide Notification Icons for Individual Apps on Mac

This practical guide walks through how to hide notification icons for individual apps on Mac, explains the main requirements, and highlights common issues that may appear along the way.

This red dot often appears on applications like Mail, Facebook, Messenger… Indicates that you have unread messages or emails. This is quite useful, helping you not to miss notifications on the app. However, when the number of unread emails, messages or notifications reaches a few hundred or even a few thousand, the usefulness can turn into annoyance. This article will show you how to quickly hide the red notification badges on your Mac.

First, you click the Apple icon in the top left corner of your Mac screen and select 'System Preferences'.

In the System Preferences window that opens, click 'Notifications'. This item has a bell icon with a red dot in the upper right corner.

In the Notifications settings interface, you'll see a list of a bunch of installed apps in the left pane. Select any app that is showing the notification badge and uncheck the 'Badge App Icon' option, as shown in the illustration below.

You can repeat this process for all other apps that are showing you red notification badges that annoy you. Note that this will only remove the annoying red icon on the app logo, while still allowing apps to send you notifications.

That's all, have a good experience with macOS!