How to Remove Notification Badges (Red Dots) on Android

Updated June 29, 2026

Those little red dots and numbers stacked on your app icons — the notification badges — can make a tidy home screen feel noisy. Here's how to turn them off completely, or clear them when they pile up, on Samsung, Pixel, and Xiaomi phones. We'll also explain the one thing most guides skip: why some badges refuse to go away.

First, there are two kinds of badges

Not all badges work the same way, and that's why some tricks clear them and others don't:

• Notification badges — the dot or number that appears because an app posted a notification you haven't opened. Read or dismiss the notification and the badge disappears.
• App unread counts — some apps (Gmail, messaging apps) and some launchers keep their own count of unread items. These ignore your notifications entirely and only reset when you open the app.

Keep this distinction in mind: the system settings below hide or clear the first kind. The second kind lives inside the app, so no system toggle or clearing trick will touch it — only opening the app will.

Option A — Turn badges off completely

If you never want to see a badge again, switch them off at the system level. This hides the icon indicator without silencing your notifications — they still arrive in your notification shade.

Google Pixel & stock Android

1. Open Settings → Notifications.
2. Turn off Notification dot on app icon.

To do it for a single app instead, go to Settings → Apps → [the app] → Notifications and turn off Allow notification dot.

Samsung (One UI)

1. Open Settings → Notifications → Advanced settings.
2. Turn off App icon badges.

Prefer a quieter dot over a number? Tap the App icon badges row itself (not the toggle) and choose the dot style instead of the count.

Xiaomi (HyperOS / MIUI)

1. Open Settings → Notifications.
2. Open Notification badges (or Manage notifications → the app) and turn the badge toggle off. You can set this per app.

Option B — Keep badges, but clear them fast

Maybe you like badges as a heads-up but hate it when they pile into the dozens. You don't have to turn them off — you can just clear them.

The built-in way

Swipe down to open the notification shade and tap Clear all. Because most badges come from active notifications, dismissing those notifications clears their dots too. Remember the catch from earlier: app unread counts (like Gmail's number) won't budge — only opening the app clears those.

The one-tap way

Opening the shade, scrolling, and reading every notification just to make the dots disappear kind of defeats the purpose. Unbadge is a free app that puts a small 1×1 widget on your home screen: tap it once and every notification badge clears — without opening the shade or getting pulled into what the notifications say. The widget also shows your current badge count at a glance, like a tidy "notification debt" meter. Under the hood it's the same action as Clear all, just one tap from the home screen and without the temptation to dive in.

Why do I have a badge but no notification?

This is the most common badge mystery, and it's usually one of these:

• An app unread count — the app still thinks you have unread items, even though you dismissed the notification.
• A notification that was auto-dismissed or snoozed, leaving the count briefly out of sync.
• A launcher quirk where the badge cache hasn't refreshed yet.

For the first case, the only real fix is opening the app. For the other two, clearing your notifications — or tapping a badge-clearing widget — resets the count. Still stuck? See our full walkthrough on why a notification badge won't go away (and how to clear it).

Frequently asked questions

Does clearing notifications remove the badges?

Yes, for badges that come from notifications. When you dismiss a notification, its dot or number disappears. App-internal unread counts (like an email app's unread total) are the exception — those only reset when you open the app.

How do I show a dot instead of a number on app icons?

On Samsung, go to Settings → Notifications → Advanced settings, tap App icon badges, and choose the dot style. On stock Android the badge is always a dot; numbers are shown only by some launchers and apps.

Why does a red dot stay even after I've read everything?

That badge is almost certainly an app's own unread count rather than a notification. Open the app and clear the unread items inside it — system notification settings won't affect it.

Is there a one-tap way to clear all notification badges?

Yes — a home-screen widget like Unbadge clears every notification badge in a single tap, without opening the notification shade. It's free on Google Play.

Clear every badge in one tap

Unbadge wipes every notification badge from your home screen — and a 1×1 widget — instantly. Free on Google Play.