If you scan your Samsung Galaxy smartphone’s notification panel daily, all those red circles with numbers littering the apps on your home screen and app drawer might look like persistent, unnecessary clutter rather than friendly reminders to check your app alerts – but you can do something about it.
To get rid of those constant anxiety-inducing reminders that you’re failing to give your apps the attention they need, you can simply hide all notification accounts or disable red dots altogether.
Since Android 8 (Oreo) with Samsung Experience, we’ve been able to change how badge app icons work on the home screen and app drawer, and it works pretty much the same now that we We’re at Android 12 (Snow Cone) with OneUI. Moreover, it works no matter which Samsung Galaxy model you have, whether it’s a S9, S10, S20, S21, S22, Z Fold, Z Fold 2, Z Fold 3, Z Flip, Z Flip 3, Note 9, Note 10, Note 20, or another model, such as the A, F, J, and M series.
To completely disable app icon badges
If your Samsung Galaxy smartphone is running Android 11 or 12, open the Settings app and go to the “Notifications” menu. Next, tap “Advanced Settings” and turn off the “App Icon Badges” switch.
For an older Galaxy model running Android 8, 9, or 10, you also access the “Notifications” menu in settings, but you can find and disable “app icon badges” without opening another menu.
Alternatively, you can disable it from:
- Settings -> Search, then find and select “App Icon Badges”. (Android 8–12)
- Settings -> Home screen. (Android 11–12)
- Settings -> Display -> Home screen. (Android 8–10)
- Long-press an empty space on the home screen, then tap “Settings” or “Home screen settings”. (Android 8–12)
- Tap the vertical ellipsis in the app drawer, then tap “Settings” or “Home screen settings.” (Android 8–12)
When you return to your home screen or app drawer, all the intrusive overlay notification icons for apps will be gone.
To remove unread accounts from app icon badges
Instead of removing app icon badges entirely from your home screen and app drawer, you can hide the number in the badges so you don’t see how many unread notifications you have.
To do this, tap anywhere on the “App Icon Badges” menu item except its toggle, and you’ll see more options. Next, change the badge style from displaying numbers to “Dot” (on Android 10–12) or “Show without numbers” (on Android 8–9).
Your app icons will now display a more subtle dot-style badge when unread notifications are present, and the number indicating the number of unread alerts will be nowhere in sight.
To display notifications from an application icon
If you want to see the most recent notification for an app on your home screen or app drawer, turn on the “App icon notifications” switch in the same “App icon badges” menu. . Then whenever you long press the app icon, you will see the latest unread alert and you can tap on it to view it.
This works whether you have badges with unread numbers, badges with no number, or no badges at all.
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