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You can continue to find trusted guidance and support on the official Apple Support site.
We want to thank the community members who have contributed their time and expertise to help others with their Apple products.
The Apple Support Community will permanently close on November 20, 2026. Starting today, the site will no longer accept new posts and is available in a read-only state.
You can continue to find trusted guidance and support on the official Apple Support site.
We want to thank the community members who have contributed their time and expertise to help others with their Apple products.
I have a new Macbook and Apple mail is not showing the unread messages count in the Mail icon in the dock. I think I have notification settings configured correctly and I have Mail's "Dock unread count" set to "All mailboxes" (tried "Inbox Only" but that doesn't show counts either). Suggestions?
MacBook Pro (M2 Pro, 2023)
It might not be Apple Mail at fault. The dock might need to be reset. Try this command in Terminal. First, exit Mail.
Copy and paste this in Terminal:
defaults delete com.apple.dock && killall Dock
Now load Mail again and see if the unread count is working again.
Is the unread message count inside of Mail correct and is only NOT showing correctly in the dock?
I can tell the dock was reset because I lost all my "keep in dock" items - which would have been worth it if it had fixed the problem but it didn't. I also tried rebooting in case there was something that was not getting loaded from the start up. Still no unread messages indicator for Mail - even though it works for other apps like Messages and Slack.
Yes. Counts inside mail are correct but not showing up in the dock. And it is only this new M2 (which I set up from scratch, not from a sync from a previous mac). Counts on the Mail icon on my phone and in the dock for my other computers are showing up fine.
FWIW ... on our five Macs (3 Sonoma; 2 Monterey) the mail count on all three comes and goes. No idea why, but it's such a minor issue we just live with it.
Apple Mail not showing unread count in Dock
