How to disable TouchWiz icon badges on your Samsung Galaxy

TouchWiz icon badges be gone! Photo: Killian Bell/Cult of Android

TouchWiz icon badges be gone! Photo: Killian Bell/Cult of Android

If you don’t mind using Samsung’s own TouchWiz launcher, but you hate the icon badges that leave your home screen looking messy, you’ll be pleased to know you can disable them. Samsung doesn’t make it easy, but it is possible in just a few steps.

Here’s how.

You won’t find an option to disable icon badges, no matter how long you spend digging around inside the Settings menu; Samsung didn’t provide one. But you can eliminate icon badges by disabling the process that manages them using these steps:

  1. Open the Settings app and select “Applications”
  2. Tap “Application manager”
  3. Swipe over until you get to the “All” tab, then tap “BadgeProvider”
  4. Tap the “Disable” button, then “Clear Data”
  5. Restart your device

Once your device has restarted, any icon badges you saw before should have disappeared, and you won’t see anymore. If you decide you want icon badges back, simple enabled the “BadgeProvider” app again.