Hide the Unread eMail Number on Mail Icons for iPhone & iPad

Most of us have an email account or two, and likewise most of us have an increasingly growing number of unread mail messages accumulating slowly (or quickly) in our inboxes. Features like VIP tagging and inbox can help to tame some of the email clutter, but there’s simply no denying that some of our inboxes are past the point of no return… where hundreds if not thousands of emails are going unread, cluttering up the inbox and making for some astronomical unread mail numbers showing up on our Mail, Gmail, Mailbox, Ymail, and other email app icons in iOS. If your iPhone or iPad mail clients look anything like this due to tons of unread emails, it’s sometimes best to just call it quits and hide that onerously giant number from the mail icons completely.

Turning Off Unread Mail Count for Mail App Icons in iOS

1. Go to “Settings” and head to “Notification Center”
2. Tap on “Mail” and then tap on the mail account name to change the unread icon count for
3. Flip the “Badge App Icon” switch to OFF
4. Repeat for other email accounts if necessary

For users who have added multiple email accounts to the Mail app, each individual Mail account will need to be adjusted to completely remove the unread count red number indicator from the app icon.

For further email relief, you can also mute the new mail alert sound in iOS or on a per account basis, while still maintaining VIP sounds for those important senders that really need to get through.

Hiding the Unread Mail Number from Gmail & Other Email Apps in iOS

1. From the “Settings” app, return to “Notification Center”
2. Select “Gmail”, “Ymail”, or the other email app to hide the unread message count for
3. Switch each “Badge App Icon” setting to the OFF position

Unlike the native Mail app for iOS, multiple email addresses setup within the Gmail app are handled by the same unread count, so keep that in mind if you’re turning off the setting for the app completely.

Of course, you can hide other red badges too, including that for Messages, Phone, Reminders, Calendar, and any other app that has updates that post as a number overlaid on the app icon too.