What does the OSX Steam dock red badge icon mean?

[josh.nz]

I'm having a hard time finding the right search terms to find anything useful, so I'll just post instead.

From time to time the OSX dock icon for Steam has a red circular badge over it with a number inside. If I cmd+~ to cycle between the open Steam windows (main window and chat), I only get these two.

I've recently discovered that if I click on the dock icon then the "steam update; restart required" box displays (but doesn't during cmd+~). So sometimes this badge indicates a steam client update.

However, other times it doesn't mean this. How can I figure out what this means? I suspect it is an unread chat message, but steam itself doesn't report any unread chat messages in the green notification section for "x unread chat message".

Any help appreciated!

[Wunderforce]

I have this same question. All I could find by googling is that it is a Mac "notification badge" which can be turned off by going to system settings>notifications. Apparently all apps can have them.

[MR RATCHET]

The notification is usually a Steam client update OR as you said, an unread chat message.

For some reason the Mac version of Steam doesn't always show that you have a new Steam message, so you have to physcially go through your chat windows until you reach the one you missed.

[HRˆvudu]

I was able to solve this by going to Steam -> Check for Updates.