Missing unread mail count in dock

[keefer8024]

The unread mail count in the doc only appears when the mail app is open. Upon closing the count disappears. Any suggestions to fix? I am running Sierra 10.12.6

 

[Raz0rEdge]

Welcome to Mac-Forums..

This is with the Apple Mail client? Which email service are you using? I use Spark as my mail client and tested with my Gmail account while Spark wasn't running but in my Dock. I have notifications enabled and when I sent myself an email from the web, I got the notification as well as the single count on the Spark Dock icon..

 

[MacInWin]

Welcome to the forum.

In Mail/Preferences/General is the "Dock unread count" option set to either Inbox only or All Mailboxes? Both should show counts, but if you have something odd chosen there, that may be what is going on.

 

[keefer8024]

I don't know my Apple mail client. Might be AT&T. Need to know how to determine. I have "Dock unread count" set to All Mailboxes so nothing odd there. Tried "Inbox only" too with same results.

 

[IWT]

I don't know my Apple mail client. Might be AT&T.

No. AT&T is your Internet Service Provider and, presumably, your email provider.

Your Mail Client is Apple. In other words, you are using "Mail" which is the application native to Apple.

At least that is what you said in your first post:

The unread mail count in the doc only appears when the mail app is open

Ian

 

[keefer8024]

Thanks IWT for the clarification. You are correct I am using the Apple Mail app.

 

[keefer8024]

Update - If I quit Mail I loose dock count but if I just close with red button count remains. Doesn't happen this way with reminders as that app always shows reminders due whether the app is open or not. Seems like both apps should behave the same! Any insights?

 

[MacInWin]

Well, there are two different actions there. The Mail Red button does NOT shut down the application, just pushes it into the background. You can tell that it's still running because on the Dock you will see a little dot below the icon for Mail, showing it is still running. But if you truly quit it via the menu, the dot goes away and the app is NOT running anywhere. With reminders, the app actually closes with the red button (the dot goes away), but because reminders is a "reminder" system, there is a background task running that watches the clock to alert you to any date/time you have set for a reminder. With Mail, you don't need a "reminder" at a time or date, so it doesn't have any background task running when you quit it.

I don't think there is any reason for the two apps to behave the same in this circumstance. One has a background process to watch the clock, the other does not. One needs to watch the clock, the other does not.

So, I guess the suggestion is to not quit Mail. There really isn't any need to do that, it runs quite nicely in the background and the alert works perfectly.

 

[pm-r]

The unread mail count in the doc only appears when the mail app is open. Upon closing the count disappears. Any suggestions to fix?

FWIW, I don't think there's anything to fix as that's how it works with the Mail.app on all our Macs. (Mavericks to El Capitan)

The red tab for the number of unread email count disappears if and when Mail.app in not running.

And if I dare say so, not exactly a consistent OS X "feature" Apple. My not-running Messages.app is showing a red tab with a number for some messages I haven't read or acknowledged yet or opened Messages.app. etc.




- Patrick
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[MacInWin]

I think the "consistency" of the way things work is that of the three applications (Mail, Messages, and Reminders) Messages and Reminders are designed to notify the user immediately of something happening--a reminder set for a time or place has triggered, a message has come in, whereas Mail is not so "urgent" in that if you don't see the email for a while, that's OK. So Messages has a daemon process running to receive messages and that daemon increments the counter and Reminders has a daemon running watching the date/time and location for any reminders you have set for a date or time or location. So, even though the presentation part of the application isn't running for Messages and Reminder, the daemons are. But not for Mail. It's running or not, you get your mail when you do cause it to run and you don't get mail when it's not running.

 

[keefer8024]

Great info from you fellow members. I'm with pm-r re consistency of apps. I consider issue closed. Thanks Members!