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Catalina Mail app's badge icon constantly backwards

My Mail app's unread mail indicator behaves very strangely... when I mark a message as read, the indicator remains at "1", and then goes away only if I mark the message as unread again. So it is constantly wrong, showing an unread message when there isn't one, and showing no unread messages when there is. Here is a video... you can see the dock icon's indicator is always backwards from what it should be.


http://everettwarner.net/images/screenrecording.mov


Restarting the Mail app fixes the problem, until a new message arrives. I've tried rebuilding my mailboxes, trashing plist files, etc. and nothing will stop this. Am I going crazy?


EDIT: it says I am running OSX 10.11 but that is because I selected the wrong computer... I am on a MacBook Pro running 10.15.4

MacBook, OS X 10.11

Posted on Apr 20, 2020 3:20 PM

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Question marked as Best reply

Posted on Apr 21, 2020 5:41 AM

snail22 wrote:

My Mail app's unread mail indicator behaves very strangely... when I mark a message as read, the indicator remains at "1", and then goes away only if I mark the message as unread again. So it is constantly wrong, showing an unread message when there isn't one, and showing no unread messages when there is. Here is a video... you can see the dock icon's indicator is always backwards from what it should be.

http://everettwarner.net/images/screenrecording.mov

Restarting the Mail app fixes the problem, until a new message arrives. I've tried rebuilding my mailboxes, trashing plist files, etc. and nothing will stop this. Am I going crazy?

EDIT: it says I am running OSX 10.11 but that is because I selected the wrong computer... I am on a MacBook Pro running 10.15.4



Boot into Recovery (Command R) and from the dropdown menu: Utilities>  Disk Utility> run the First Aid on your Macintosh HD (and the "Macintosh HD-Data" volume as well if Catalina) If errors are found and repaired, run again until no errors reported.

Recovery: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204904


To trouble shoot further you can:


Try a SafeBoot https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201262

Takes noticeable longer to get to the login screen, does a 5-15 minute disk repair before it fully boots up, and certain system caches get cleared and rebuilt, including dynamic loader cache, etc. Login and test. Reboot and test



To sort various anomalies there has been success in reinstalling the Combo update on top of your existing macOS 10.15.4

Combo update macOS 10.15.4 https://support.apple.com/kb/DL2037?locale=en_US


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2 replies
Question marked as Best reply

Apr 21, 2020 5:41 AM in response to snail22

snail22 wrote:

My Mail app's unread mail indicator behaves very strangely... when I mark a message as read, the indicator remains at "1", and then goes away only if I mark the message as unread again. So it is constantly wrong, showing an unread message when there isn't one, and showing no unread messages when there is. Here is a video... you can see the dock icon's indicator is always backwards from what it should be.

http://everettwarner.net/images/screenrecording.mov

Restarting the Mail app fixes the problem, until a new message arrives. I've tried rebuilding my mailboxes, trashing plist files, etc. and nothing will stop this. Am I going crazy?

EDIT: it says I am running OSX 10.11 but that is because I selected the wrong computer... I am on a MacBook Pro running 10.15.4



Boot into Recovery (Command R) and from the dropdown menu: Utilities>  Disk Utility> run the First Aid on your Macintosh HD (and the "Macintosh HD-Data" volume as well if Catalina) If errors are found and repaired, run again until no errors reported.

Recovery: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204904


To trouble shoot further you can:


Try a SafeBoot https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201262

Takes noticeable longer to get to the login screen, does a 5-15 minute disk repair before it fully boots up, and certain system caches get cleared and rebuilt, including dynamic loader cache, etc. Login and test. Reboot and test



To sort various anomalies there has been success in reinstalling the Combo update on top of your existing macOS 10.15.4

Combo update macOS 10.15.4 https://support.apple.com/kb/DL2037?locale=en_US


Apr 29, 2020 10:17 AM in response to leroydouglas

Well it turns out that setting "Dock unread count" to inbox-only in the Mail prefs fixes the glitch, and I'm fine having it set this way. But before I discovered this fix, the problem persisted through every conceivable remedy, including all of the above suggestions, trashing the Library/Mail folder and starting from scratch, creating a completely new email account, etc. So I'm puzzled that nobody else has come across the before, but at least now I'm satisfied.

Catalina Mail app's badge icon constantly backwards

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