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Why is there a red dot on my iMac system preferences icon?

The System Preferences icon on my iMac dock has a red dot with the number 1 in it. However, nothing in the System Preferences window itself or in the Notifications Center list shows any indication that a notification is 'active'.

Reading elsewhere, the red dot on the Notifications icon seems to be part of the icon design, but why the red dot and number on my dock icon?

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iMac (Retina 5K, 27-inch, Late 2015), OS X El Capitan (10.11.2)

Posted on Mar 30, 2017 9:56 AM

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Posted on Apr 1, 2017 11:56 PM

Go to icloud in system preferences, and mine was asking to 2 stage authentication. After this was sorted mine was normal.

16 replies

Mar 30, 2017 12:19 PM in response to Allan Eckert

The post you refer to notes that the red dot is part of the icon design, but I believe the statement refers to the 'Notifications' icon in System Preferences, not to the System Preferences icon in the dock.

If it is true that the System Preferences icon itself has a red dot, then the design has changed on my Mac within the last week! Prior to that, the System Preferences icon in the dock did NOT have a red dot.

Why is there a red dot on my iMac system preferences icon?

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