Do app badges actually increase phone pickups?

Why app badges exist

App badges are not a neutral design choice. A red circle with a number is engineered to trigger a response. In a 2019 narrative review of addictive features in social media apps and freemium games, researchers identified six mechanisms that app designers use to prolong usage, and linked them to established psychological principles such as the mere-exposure effect, the endowment effect and the Zeigarnik effect¹.

The Zeigarnik effect is the relevant one here: unfinished tasks occupy more mental space than completed ones. A badge that says "3" is an unfinished task. It signals that something is waiting for you, and the brain tends to want to close that loop. The review concludes that these elements can prolong usage time, though it also notes that isolating the effect of any single element is difficult because independent scientists rarely get access to app-level data¹.

What actually drives phone checking

The honest answer is that we do not have a large, controlled trial showing that hiding badge icons alone reduces phone pickups. What we have is strong evidence that apps are designed to pull you in, and weaker but suggestive evidence that reducing those pulls helps.

A ten-day randomised controlled trial with 143 UK university students tested an online intervention combining mindfulness exercises, self-monitoring and mood tracking. The intervention produced large reductions in self-reported smartphone distraction and improved several secondary psychological outcomes. However, it did not reduce habitual behaviours, nomophobia, or time spent on social media².

That distinction matters. Distraction is the feeling of being pulled away from what you intended to do. Habitual checking is the automatic reach for the phone. Badges feed both, but they are not the whole story. The trial's mediation analysis found that emotional self-awareness, not mindful attention, explained much of the improvement in distraction². In other words, noticing why you reach for the phone may matter more than any single interface tweak.

Does hiding badges work in practice?

Given the absence of a direct trial, the strongest case for hiding badges is mechanistic. If badges create a pull to check, removing them removes one pull. That is not a guarantee, but it is a reasonable, testable hypothesis.

The review by Montag and colleagues supports the idea that design elements like badges are part of a business model built on attention extraction. They argue that it may be better to regulate or remove certain design elements than to expect users to resist them through willpower alone¹. Hiding badges is a user-level version of that removal.

From the Unleashed Environment Bank: "Badge counts hidden on home screen: Red badge icons are designed to trigger a check. Removing them can cut down on phone pickups." This is a practical recommendation, not a research finding, but it aligns with the mechanism described in the literature.

The context problem

One study of 360 college students in mainland China tracked smartphone usage for a week using an automatic tracking app, then measured emotional health and perceived social support. Among students with high perceived social support, more frequent and longer social networking app use was associated with better emotional health³.

This is an observational study, so it cannot establish causation. But it complicates the simple story that phone checking is always bad. The same behaviour can have different effects depending on why you are doing it and who is on the other end. A badge from a close friend's message is not the same as a badge from a shopping app.

The practical implication: you do not need to eliminate all badges. You need to decide which apps deserve the right to interrupt you.

What to do this week

Start with the cheapest possible experiment. On iPhone, go to Settings, then Notifications, and turn off "Badges" for every app except messaging apps where a missed message has real consequences. On Android, long-press the app icon and disable notification dots.

Then observe for a week. You are not measuring screen time in the abstract. You are measuring how often you pick up the phone without a clear intention. If the number drops, keep the change. If it does not, the badges were not your main trigger, and you can look elsewhere: home screen layout, notification sounds, or the habit of reaching for the phone during boredom.

From the Unleashed Awareness Bank: "Phone checking: Reaching for your phone within seconds of boredom — a tiny habit cue that hijacks attention." If boredom is the trigger, no badge setting will fix it. You need a replacement behaviour, not just a removal.

For a deeper reset, pair badge removal with a 90-minute deep work block with no phone and no notifications, from the Unleashed Moves Bank, or a low-dopamine morning that delays phone use for 90 minutes after waking. These are complementary strategies, not substitutes.

If you want a structured way to track these changes, Unleashed OS includes habits, a journal, mood check-ins, reminders and curated banks of research-backed moves. It is in public beta on iOS via TestFlight.

The evidence does not let us say "hiding badges reduces pickups by X per cent." But it does let us say this: badges are designed to pull you in, the pull is real, and removing it costs you nothing. That is a good enough reason to try.