I sit in entrance of a Mac all day (such as you most likely do), so I depend on notifications rather a lot, particularly to speak with co-workers, associates, and household. The issue I’ve been having, nonetheless, is that the Messages app usually fakes me out with phantom unread messages, leaving me annoyed and confused.

Right here’s what occurs: The Messages icon within the Dock exhibits a crimson “1” badge, indicating that there’s a brand new message. However after I open Messages, there’s nothing new, and worse, the badge gained’t go away. So I am going again to work for some time, pull up the Dock, see the badge (once more), and assume I’ve a brand new message (once more). The badge often goes away after I restart my Mac, however that’s not one thing I love to do all that always.

Fortunately, I stumbled upon a solution to rapidly zap that phanton unread badge. After it popped up once more final week, I by accident right-clicked on the app icon within the Dock (with two fingers on the trackpad, right-click or Management-click on a mouse), which opened up the pop-up choices menu. beneath the New Message choice on the high of the menu was a tally of my messages with a notification that one was unread. I clicked it, and a clean dialog appeared that was apparently tricking the app into considering I had an unread message. I deleted it and the badge disappeared. Lastly!

Foundry

Now I understand how to repair it every time this occurs to me once more. Plus I realized a trick to rapidly see my unread messages. It’s probably not a repair for my drawback–there’s clearly a bug in Messages on my Mac that’s inflicting this—however till an replace fixes it, I can at the least clear the phantom badge and get again to work.

Immediately I Discovered is a Macworld column that spotlights lesser-known however helpful ideas and methods for Apple customers. You probably have any concepts for future columns, ship an electronic mail to michael_simon@idg.com.