Macbook Messages showing phantom messages still

Question

Level 1

14 points

Macbook Messages showing phantom messages still

This bug is still persisting on Sequoia 15.3. My Messages app shows 44 unread messages. I've tried killing dock and adding it again. The red notification disappears but then shows back up again as soon as I get a message.

The only thing that works is asking Siri to read them. However this is extraordinarily tedious as she asks after every single message "do you want me to reply"?

Can someone please take a look at this issue and fix it in the source? If the messages app shows nothing when I view unread, it should not be popping up like this on the icon.

I ended up disabling badges for Messages, but this is a hack.

MacBook Pro 14″

Posted on Feb 26, 2025 6:19 PM

Reply

Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

TYFCA Author

Level 1

14 points

Feb 26, 2025 9:06 PM in response to TYFCA

Okay, I figured out a solution to this which works without having Siri read all the messages!

Open Messages on iOS
In upper right, tap the Circle with 3 dots
Tap "Select Messages"
In the lower left, tap "Read All"
Open Messages on Macbook
Click "Messages" menu in upper left, then "Settings"
Click "iMessage" Tab
Next to "Enable Messages in iCloud" click "Sync Now"

If red badge is still showing up, you can reset dock as others have suggested, but this should work! And doesn't require you to say "yes" to Siri a ton of times.

You can test that this worked by sending yourself a message. Previous solutions (such as removing from dock and reopening) would immediately show the phantom message count again if you sent message to yourself. This technique cleared it.

Reply

Macbook Messages showing phantom messages still

Similar questions