Get Rid of That Annoying Red Dot on Your IPhone Without Setting up Apple Pay
iOS: The red notification icons that adorn our iPhone home screens are mostly useful, but they can be quite annoying at times. For example, you’re probably tired of seeing that ugly red dot in the iPhone settings app, a constant reminder that it’s time to set up Apple Pay . Fortunately, there is a simple solution hiding in plain sight – if you don’t want (or can’t) link your credit card to Apple Pay.
As Apple blogger John Gruber points out, the first step is somewhat counterintuitive: open the Settings app and click Set Up Apple Pay. Once the process starts, you can easily opt out by choosing Cancel or Configure Later in Wallet. Both of these options should completely remove the red dot from your settings apps, at least until another major update arrives.
If you are plagued by red dots in other applications, this is also easy to fix. Just go back to settings and open the notification menu. Find the app that annoys you, select it, and turn off “App Icon for Icon”. You will still receive app notifications, but dots will no longer fill your home screen.
This setting doesn’t work for the settings themselves, but it works great for other apps that might accumulate notifications. Personally, I gave up on a mailbox zero years ago and decided to hide the number of notifications in my Gmail app. This little trick is also great for any other app that keeps piling up alerts, but you don’t bother checking if it’s annoying Twitter replies or Venmo payment requests.