“Badges? We don’t need no stinkin’ badges!” This quote from 1948’s, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre is often said, but also is exactly how I feel about those darn Apple badges. Yes, they were designed to help bring attention to new or unread notifications, but for most people, the constant reminder simply gets really annoying. But, you can swap out those badges with informative text-based labels, for a sleeker, less obtrusive notification.
How to replace icons badges with informative labels
If you have a jailbroken device, head over to Cydia and download Goodges. Not in love with the name, but the app is very handy nonetheless.
Once installed, you’ll respring your device and Goodges will already be enabled and you’ll see the changes on your former badges immediately. Basically, instead of the app name, you will see highlighted text displaying the amount and type of notification(s) you have unread instead of the app name. In the screenshot below you’ll see that I have 16 unread Facebook notifications.
Once you have read the notifications, the app name will return back to its original state and the highlighted text will be removed. To alter the default settings of Goodges, head over to Settings when the phone is back on. In Settings, scroll down until you see Goodges amongst all of your Cydia tweaks.
In the Goodges menu, you’ll be able to change all of these things:
- Label coloring.
- Label highlighting.
- Label color matching the icon (required).
- Hide badges.
- Hide label that doesn’t have a notification pending.
- Capitalization of the first letter of the label.
- Bold label.
- Per-app customization.
- For per app customization you can change the label text, color, and highlight color to differentiate from other applications.
While these are mostly cosmetic changes, the attention to detail for a free app like this is much appreciated. So, if you are tired of the same old red badge notifications, then Goodges is a great alternative. The text-based notifications are super clean, and are not so annoyingly noticeable.
Let us know what you think of Goodges in the comment section.
