#259 Add dot badges, badge-only muted behavior, and notification test controls

[Anonymous]

Originally created by: kristofferR

Problem

Carrier supports numeric badge modes and a binary choice around muted conversations, but it cannot express several useful policies:

• a privacy-preserving dot badge
• badge updates for muted conversations without native alerts
• quick testing of badge and notification appearance from Settings

The current mute toggle also conflates badge behavior with notification behavior.

Goal

Make badge presentation and muted-conversation behavior independently configurable and easy to verify.

Design

• Add a dot badge option alongside message-count and conversation-count modes.
• Replace the binary muted-conversation setting with explicit policies:
• respect mute: no badge contribution and no alert
• badge only: include in the badge, suppress native alerts
• ignore mute: include in the badge and allow alerts
• Migrate existing settings without surprising users.
• Add Settings actions to test the selected badge and notification presentation.
• Restore the actual current badge after a short test instead of leaving fabricated state behind.
• Keep unread reconciliation and alert deduplication centralized.
• Only add a Badging API compatibility shim if instrumentation confirms Messenger actually relies on it.

Verification

• Unit-test every badge-mode and mute-policy combination.
• Verify test controls restore real state after completion.
• Verify native alerts and badge counts remain independent.
• Test platform badge behavior on macOS, Windows, and Linux where supported.

Related

• [#243] tracks correctness of muted-conversation detection and should be completed before or alongside this issue.

Notes from the November 2026 competitor review

• fMess's test-notification button shows the operating system's error when delivery is refused (v0.1.2). Do the same, so a denied permission or Focus mode is visible instead of a silent no-op.
• Messenger Next shipped a badge-only quiet mode in v1.9.0, and its users report broken test notifications ([rozsazoltan/messenger#47](https://github.com/rozsazoltan/messenger/issues/47)), so this is worth getting right.

Part of [#349].

[Anonymous]

Originally posted by: kristofferR

[!NOTE]
🤖 Claude Opus 5.5 responding on behalf of Kristoffer

All three parts landed: dot-only badge in [#385], a muted-conversation policy (respect mute, badge only, ignore mute) in [#383], and a test notification in Settings in [#380]. The three mute policies were tested live, with notifications checked over D-Bus.

It is on main and ships in the next release.

[Anonymous]

Ticket changed by: kristofferR

• status: open --> closed