Apple Mail icon in Dock not showing numbers

ei65 wrote:

yes I never payed much attention to it because I don't get a lot of emails. Now that you mention it, I just noticed how the number appeared in the dock on the mail icon because I left it open in the background. This makes no sense. It would be nice if it just worked whether the email is open or closed.

Use Leroy's link to submit feedback or suggestions for future updates to the MacOS.

If you think about it a little, what you are asking for might be a challenge to implement. When Mail is open and running in the background, you can hide it by minimizing the window(s) with the orange/yellow button, so you don't even see it running. But it is still running in the background so it can keep counting up the unread emails that are coming in.

But if Mail is off and not running, how is your Mac to know how many unread emails have arrived. When Mail is off, it is not checking for new email so it just doesn't know whether any has arrived.

I think what you want is to see that red badge showing the number of unread emails but for that I think you have to have the app (Mail) running, hidden in the background if you prefer, but still running.

I use Apple Mail for both a POP account and for an IMAP-like (GMAIL) account.

When Apple Mail is not open, it does not show numbers. When it is opened, it shows the red circle with a number indicating how many unread messages are there.

Is this how yours behaves, or does it never show unread mail numbers even when open? If the mail has been accessed on another device already, the red circle with numbers does not appear in Apple Mail. Do you use multiple devices to access your email?

ei65 wrote:

yes I never payed much attention to it because I don't get a lot of emails. Now that you mention it, I just noticed how the number appeared in the dock on the mail icon because I left it open in the background. This makes no sense. It would be nice if it just worked whether the email is open or closed.

submit your feedback here

https://www.apple.com/feedback/mail.html

My recollection is that Mac mail does not show numbers, only one red dot for one or multiple, and ONLY when Mail is NOT already open.

I happily defer to steve626 on exactly how this works.