System preferences notification red badge annoying

To suppress the red badge icon on the Dock, is one more Terminal command, copy and paste:

defaults write com.apple.systempreferences AttentionPrefBundleIDs 0 && killall Dock

Log into another user account, Set up users, guests, and groups on Mac,  and see if the problem persists (this tells us if the problem is limited to your user account or is system wide). Then…

Boot into Safe Mode (How to use safe mode on your Mac - Apple Support) by booting with the Shift key held down and check there to see if the problem persists.  Reboot normally and test again.

NOTE: Safe Mode boot can take up to 10 minutes as it's doing some system cache cleaning, volume verifying and directory repairing. 

saili66 wrote:

my friend.....I do not have this file....help

Everyone running Catalina has the file. Did you follow this link…?

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/251228163?answerId=252422036022#252422036022

DarkWere wrote:

If you can't fix the problem, just ignore it.

This is a wonderful solution!

FWIW, this is a users forum not an Apple forum. However, I've only seen a report of the "red badge" remaining twice. I have 5 Macs running Catalina 10.15.4 now and none have the problem. It seems to be a problem only a few "suffer" from and is local to their machines.

Since it's so rare an occurrence there's no known "solution" at this time.

There have been two users that said it didn't work for them including yourself. Make sure you are deleting the correct file.

~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.preferences.softwareupdate.plist

In the Finder, press "command shift G", copy then paste the path into the window that opens and click "Return". It will highlight the file. Move it to the Trash then Restart your Mac.

If that doesn't work I don't know why.

aleksejs32 wrote:

Instead of deleting, I renamed the file. The red badge disappeared.

Nevertheless the file was not regenerated. Also renamed file disappeared.

I couldn't say what happens if you don't follow the instructions.

First, copy this line…

 ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.preferences.softwareupdate.plist

Then in the Finder, press "command shift G", paste the line into the window that opens and click "Return". It will highlight the file. Move it to the Trash then Restart your Mac.

If you want it to go away, delete this file then restart your Mac…

~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.preferences.softwareupdate.plist

You can wait for macOS 10.15.5

please submit your Apple Feedback http://www.apple.com/feedback

or ignore it.

My friend, ...........

Don't open the System Preferences.

Run it again, to stifle the red badge.