MacOS – Dock Notifications Displaying Odd Red Icons Instead

dockiconmacosnotifications

Having an odd issue. My dock is showing these strange red icons where normal numerical notifications should be. For example, Thunderbird will display a 3 when I have 3 new messages, but instead it is showing this red A? icon. This happens with all the apps in my dock that display a notification.

See attached screen shot:

enter image description here

Notice the Thunderbird icon at the top and the Printer icon at the bottom.

Anyway to get my standard notifications back?

Best Answer

This looks like it might be a problem with a system font. Try this...

  1. Open Font Book (in /Applications)
  2. Select the "All Fonts" collection in the left-hand pane
  3. Click any font in the right-hand pane to focus that pane
  4. Select all the fonts using Edit -> Select All or Cmd+A
  5. In the File menu, click "Validate Fonts"

If any fonts are corrupt, this method should alert you to the problem.

Font Book - Validate Fonts menu option

Font Book - Font Validation window

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