I love my iPhone. I’ve mentioned that, right?
Anyway, in case you don’t have one, this is what you see when someone texts you:
It’s a complete text. I can see the whole thing so I know what they said.
This is what it looks like when the text is long enough that I can’t see the whole thing:
See the dot dot dot? If there’s a . . . I open the text.
If I can see the whole text, I don’t open it up. If I can’t see the whole text, I do.
I’m ultra-efficient like that.
This is what it looks like within my “texts” screen:
It’s the end of a conversation. No need to text back, right?
SO WHY OPEN THE TEXT TO SEE WHAT I’VE ALREADY SEEN?!?!
Apparently . . . some people open a text they’ve already read simply to make that little blue dot disappear.
I do not care about blue dots.
Nor do I care about red numbers that state I have a certain number of unread texts. (See the top left?)
Those numbers are wrong. I have read my texts, I just haven’t opened them.
Therefore I pay no attention to that stupid red number.
I am smarter than a red number.
But then my husband cut his foot.
What in the world does a foot injury have to do with read/unread texts?
Well, nothing. Except that we were going on a trip for the fourth of July and he needed to keep his foot elevated so I had to drive. And he decided to use this rare time of stillness to “help me out” by opening all my texts so the red number 141 would go away.
The red number 141 that apparently drove him crazy.
Even though it wasn’t his phone.
12 minutes later, the red number was gone.
(At least the one for text messages.)
12 minutes that included stopping to read and then read aloud to me this (previously unopened) text:
From the previous 4th of July.
Do (meaningless) red numbers and blue dots drive you nuts? I think for me, they’re like single stray socks-on-the-floor in an otherwise clean room.
I simply don’t see them.
____________________________________________________
--Nony
The dots bug me. To me they are like un checked boxes on a to do list. However, what bugs me MORE is when my husband tries to fix something for me (on the computer or iPad) that is not broken and works just fine for me. Or when he wants to re-arrange the coffee mug cupboard so it makes sense to HIM (except he is not he one putting away dishes or setting the table!)
This is not a problem, it is an opportunity. Direct him to the sock drawer or other area you dont mind him messing with and reward him for organizing that. Everybody wins.
My husband keeps asking me Why haven’t you update your phone? How many texts do you have? Yeah… sorry. I just don’t have time for that… Totally get you!
OH. MY. GOSH. YES!!! The red number would drive me insane!
I open my texts. The red number bothers me. Probably why my house is a mess, I am using all my time to open those texts… LOL
hahahaha!!
The numbers and dots drive me crazy! However actual messes usually escape my attention. I blame it on the perpetual mess that comes with having three toddlers (including twin boys) but hubby is a marine and a stray dust bunny doesn’t escape his notice lol
I’m so stressed out just looking at the image of your phone. OMG, make the numbers and dots go away!!! Click on the apps before my head explodes! AGGGHHHH.
Haha!!
the bubbles with the numbers drive me insane. I have to open the full text (mostly because my iphone5 doesn’t preview texts although I’m sure that is some setting I’ve randomly set and forgot about…. ) I have to delete the voice mails, check the missed call even though I know who’s call I missed, and I have to read and delete voice mail even though I don’t care about 90% of them and just delete them without reading them. The bubbles make me think I’ve somehow missed something vitally important or that I have some sort of unfinished business (like I’ll somehow come back as a ghost if I die and there are message alerts on my phone.)
I can’t stand the number there!! I wish I were as uptight about my house!!
LOL! Exactly!!! I know my husband would LOVE it if I was as OCD about cleaning as I am about getting rid of dots and numbers. Unfortunately, I have selective OCD. 😉
I’m with your hubby here. It would drive me crazy. Oh course, it also drives me crazy that my hubby has kept over 8,000 messages in his inbox. E-mail clutter!
I have to open my text and get rid of dots and numbers. If you don’t actually open them, are they marked as read on the other persons phone? I love to know that someone with an iphone has read the message, because you can’t do that with non iphone texts.
YES!!! I have an android and an envelope pops up when I get a text. Even if I read the whole text, that envelope still HAS to go. In fact, if there is anything in my status bar that isn’t usually there, I have to do what needs to be done to get rid of it. MAKES ME CRAZY!
I make the numbers go away because I don’t always have my phone on me. Sometimes my phone sits in my purse for a day or two or three before I think to check it. And then it usually has to be charged up again before I can read anything. If I have a bunch of red numbers I know I’ve got some catching up to do. If they were always there, then I would never know if someone new had sent me a message, and I’d never respond, and I’d probably miss out on something important. And I absolutely HATE it when I only have myself to blame.
This.
Even if I have my phone with me constantly I don’t always hear it, or have it on silent because I forgot to turn the volume back up after church or something. I could never remember what that number is so that I could know if I missed a message.
Now my home answering machine . . . . I always know what the current number is on there and whether I’ve missed a call. I delete them every couple of weeks.
I do have to get rid of the number on my phone. I don’t know why that bugs me because I wrote about getting rid of 6,584 emails in ONE account a couple of months ago. Since then I have been pretty good about keeping the main inbox under 500, but Gmail just had to add a couple of extra folders, so it’s closer to 600. Maybe I’m that way with the phone because I’m so bad with the emails? 🙂
How did you do it? My email drives me nuts!
Andrea…
I took the extreme measure. I made sure there were 100 emails per page, clicked the little blank box in the left corner to select everything. It’s located above the Primary tab, next to the circle for refresh – then very quickly skimmed each page to make sure there wasn’t anything important to save. If there was, I UN-checked those boxes (next to each email I wanted to save) … then I clicked delete.
I didn’t open any of them, just kept things from family, friends, or anything business related.
It’s hard to just delete unopened emails, but when your account is that backed up, there’s nothing else to do but check them all – and I wasn’t doing that. It still took a couple of hours because it was more than 65 pages. Sad thing is… I deleted a couple thousand more last week – and still have almost two-thousand more under my Primary tab.
Yeah. I need a secretary! 😀
Oops. I should have added that I unsubscribed from EVERYTHING I don’t absolutely enjoy. This is one of the very few websites I visit, so I kept this and two or three others. Unfortunately, I can’t do the same thing when it comes to my job.
Thanks for the swift and thorough reply. I get so bogged down trying to organize and caragorize, and I’m afraid I’m going to lose something important! I guess I need to get more serious about it. Hmm. The house clutter probably needs the same approach!
You’re welcome. 🙂
I worried about that too … but then I realized I did inadvertently delete something I needed, it probably wouldn’t matter … because I’d have never read it with the disaster that was my inbox anyway.
LOL…yeah. My house needs that approach too. I keep intending to get rid of tons of stuff, but most of it is still here. I’ve got stuff in seven-year-old moving boxes I haven’t seen in … well … seven years. 😀
If you don’t use the badge numbers, why not just turn them off? Then there’ll be no red dot to annoy him 😉
http://osxdaily.com/2012/01/09/remove-red-badge-icons-from-apps-ios/
You’re my hero!!! Thanks for this link!
I’m with you…doesn’t bother me. If I can see what the message was, great. Every couple of days, I do the delete all on my phone and clean it out. It makes me feel like a rebel when it asks me if I’m sure I want to delete unread messages. Yep!
Now if I could just get rid of the disaster-zone of a house with that much efficiency….
Ha ha! I am so laughing at this because I’m just like your husband. I recently went through my husband’s 600+ emails and filed them in the appropriate folders for him because it drives ME crazy. He couldn’t care less. I am like Sheldon from The Big Bang Theory – as soon as I hear that ding or see that notification light, I’m on it – and if I can’t get to it right away, I just keep thinking about it until I can FINALLY (like 2 minutes later) get rid of that light. I just don’t get how “you people” can live care-free while that light is staring you in the face! lol
I have to say, I’m with your hubby on this one. I can’t stand any numbers, dots, etc. If I don’t want/need to listen to a voicemail, I still let it play just to get it to go away. If I don’t have time to catch up on Words with Friends, I pass on all my turns so those numbers aren’t there mocking me. 🙂 Shhh, don’t tell him, but when my hubby is in the shower in the morning, I go through and open all his texts to make his dots/numbers go away too. 😉
I literally just laughed out loud! Brilliant!
LOL…they do not drive me or my husband crazy. Of course we are both slobs so that might answer that question. They do drive my Dad crazy. Every time he is at my house and sees all those numbers for my email he asks why I have that many unread emails. He goes so far to ask why I don’t delete more emails. It always makes me laugh. He cleans out his email constantly and has nothing “unread” ever for anything. He evens had to delete all voice mails on his answering machine as soon as he notices them.
VISUAL clutter! Socks? Meh. But my phone/computer is clean.
I have several folders on my desktop into which I put files. THAT makes DH crazy. And that I have them in neat rows.
Generally not an issue except on the rare occasion he needs to find something. Logical lines and labels are a problem because…..
But let’s not discuss the bathroom counter.
Some bother me and some don’t. I never check my voice messages because I don’t bother listening to them. I just cut to the chase and call the person right back. In the meantime, I have like 8 voice messages and DH comments on it at times. I also never update my phone. DH, the IT guy, does! lol
No, the unread-text-numbers don’t bother me, just like you, I don’t “see” them like I didn’t “see” the clutter that sat in the corner next to my stove for two months before I removed it. Although I have a Samsung Galaxy, not an Iphone, and it does this annoying thing where if you have an unread message, missed call, or voice mail, it vibrates every time you pick it up until you check your messages. So I go in and “look” at all of my messages so it will stop vibrating.
I have to open them so the number goes away. That way I can see at glance if I have a new one. Cause my husband and mom tend to get annoyed if I don’t respond in a timely manner.
I’m definitely with your husband on this one. I have turned off all notifications except for texts because I feel compelled to check them.
The blue dots and red letters don’t bother me, but they seem to bother my husband and my daughter who then in turn bother me until I get rid of them. 🙂
oh those red numbers and blue dots drive me nuts. UNLESS it’s for un-listened to voicemails. i hate voicemails for some reason. i don’t listen unless there’s at least 10 to listen to at a time (which makes me hate them even more because then they’re really wasting my time.) and i get red numbers for missed calls. calls that were only “missed” because i silenced them when they came in. so really, i know i missed calls, and i know who they’re from, and i shouldn’t need to open my call list just to make the number go away. although sometimes i do anyway. because the number bugs me.
Hahahaha! MY husband goes crazy that I have 21,349 unopened emails. I don’t delete them… I don’t know why, never think about it, but when he looks at my phone or goes on to the computer he sees the number growing… now I live for his sigh and reading the number and grumbling. lol LOVE IT!
They do bug me, more because I don’t know if there is a new one that could be important. I probably have my notifications set differently than you , but when I pick up my phone, I will see that I have 3 messages, and one my be my kids needing me. I might not notice if the number changed from 34 to 37 and then I might miss it.
To each his own… 🙂
I used to let the emails pile up but if you don’t put important ones into a folder or print them perhaps and your computer dies, you lose your emails if you are using an email program (like Outlook). Your computer can really really slow down too with a program, but if you have an internet email you are good.
My phone and email are the only tidy things around here. I delete emails several times a day and clear all notifications on my phone immediately. No kids or demanding jobs here so these are easy tasks.
Hahaha I’m a slob too but yeah I like to have an accurate number of unread messages. And in other services I read a message if I want to indicate that I’ve read it.