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New version adds numbers to icons

markdoc

Android Expert
Jun 28, 2011
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Suburb of New York City, NY, USA
I've been using Nova with Nova Prime for years. The new version caused a change that stumped me. Now, many of my home screen icons had numbers added to them that never did before. So I asked support for help and they came through but left out the details.
It's fairly easy to remove the numbers that you don't want. Here are the details.
1. Long press the icon with the number.
2. Tap on the "pencil" (Edit) & you get:
3. Capture+_2021-09-05-09-34-25.png
Tap on App notification settings & you get:
Capture+_2021-09-05-09-35-12.png
4. Turn off icon badge by tapping on it and you're done. Just back out to the home screen and the number is gone.
Good luck.
 
huh??? i just installed nova a few week or so ago and i did not have to disable icon badges. it was already disabled by default. not sure why you had to do that after an update......weird.
I don't know why either but I went from only my email, Facebook and Instagram apps having numbers to about 10 other apps that didn't make sense. I just thought I'd try to help anyone else that had a similar issue. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
 
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Were you using TeslaUnread before? Nova 7 doesn't support that any more, so you are stuck with Google's inferior version now (i.e. based on notifications, so the badge disappears if you swipe the notification away). But if you were using TeslaUnread previously your notification badge settings would change when you updated to Nova 7, which might be why you found this change in behaviour recently.
 
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Were you using TeslaUnread before? Nova 7 doesn't support that any more, so you are stuck with Google's inferior version now (i.e. based on notifications, so the badge disappears if you swipe the notification away). But if you were using TeslaUnread previously your notification badge settings would change when you updated to Nova 7, which might be why you found this change in behaviour recently.
I was using TeslaUnread and uninstalled it when I saw numbers on the wrong icons. Unfortunately, that didn't get rid of the wrong numbers. I had to go into each apps settings and turn off the icon badge. Now it's fine.
 
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No, if you update to Nova 7 TeslaUnread stops working, so you'll just get some default badge behaviour.

I think it's a shame as TeslaUnread was much better than Google's notification badge system - as, I understand, was Samsung's version which they dropped when Google introduced their own. In general I like standards rather than a free-for-all of proprietary solutions, but Google did a weak and lazy job with notification badges.
 
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No, if you update to Nova 7 TeslaUnread stops working, so you'll just get some default badge behaviour.

I think it's a shame as TeslaUnread was much better than Google's notification badge system - as, I understand, was Samsung's version which they dropped when Google introduced their own. In general I like standards rather than a free-for-all of proprietary solutions, but Google did a weak and lazy job with notification badges.
And I was wrong about everything being fine. All the notification badges are messed up. My email icon shows only new unread emails. If I open my email app, but don't read them, and close the app, the unread emails are no longer counted. My Facebook and Instagram icons no longer show numbers. Tesla support blames everything on my phone or those apps, not Nova. Bit everything was fine before the update. Who knows? I give up for now.
 
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Because it relies on notifications anything that clears the notification removes the badge. So if opening your email app removed the notification that would explain it.

Funnily my email app the other day showed the total number of unread emails - that type of thing may well depend on which app it is.

If you were using TeslaUnread before the update then that is why things no longer work the same. In one sense it's not their fault, because this is the way the (by comparison, sucky) Google implementation works. Of course in another sense it is their fault because they withdrew support for their own, better, tool, but actually they stopped supporting that a few years ago and even withdrew it, so they may not count that as a factor any more. For those who had it though it kept on working until the launch of Nova 7, which is why the pain arrives now.
 
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Because it relies on notifications anything that clears the notification removes the badge. So if opening your email app removed the notification that would explain it.

Funnily my email app the other day showed the total number of unread emails - that type of thing may well depend on which app it is.

If you were using TeslaUnread before the update then that is why things no longer work the same. In one sense it's not their fault, because this is the way the (by comparison, sucky) Google implementation works. Of course in another sense it is their fault because they withdrew support for their own, better, tool, but actually they stopped supporting that a few years ago and even withdrew it, so they may not count that as a factor any more. For those who had it though it kept on working until the launch of Nova 7, which is why the pain arrives now.

Thanks for your explanations. I greatly appreciate your help.
 
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That is a weird thing to experience. How did you find the solution?
I haven't found a solution. I fixed my email app by using it's widget instead of it's standard icon. My texting app seems ok. But now I'm not getting anything from Facebook or Instagram. I have to open those apps to see if I've gotten anything when before , the icons always showed the numbers of new posts to me. Since I didn't change those apps and I checked their settings to be sure their "icon badges" weren't turned off, it has to be an issue with Nova. It may be time to dump Nova.
 
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I haven't found a solution. I fixed my email app by using it's widget instead of it's standard icon. My texting app seems ok. But now I'm not getting anything from Facebook or Instagram. I have to open those apps to see if I've gotten anything when before , the icons always showed the numbers of new posts to me. Since I didn't change those apps and I checked their settings to be sure their "icon badges" weren't turned off, it has to be an issue with Nova. It may be time to dump Nova.
I've got the opposite. I'm a new user of Nova (not prime yet). I don't have new notification numbers on my icons and I would like that.
 
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I've got the opposite. I'm a new user of Nova (not prime yet). I don't have new notification numbers on my icons and I would like that.
Good luck to you. I'm not thrilled with Nova anymore but I'm in too deep to drop it. It's mainly that their support is terrible. They don't take responsibility for any issues that develop. They blamed me for having too many apps on my phone and too many screens, where there is nothing about limits in their information.
 
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I've got the opposite. I'm a new user of Nova (not prime yet). I don't have new notification numbers on my icons and I would like that.
its called notification badges. go into the nova settings. easiest way is to long press on the homescreen. look for the cog wheel icon.....that is your nova settings. then scroll down to notification badges and select "numeric dots"
 
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