Hi there - I ran into the same issue myself, but sadly I still haven't found a way to show the badge count without opening the app. I'm still experimenting with it.
I expected some pushback on subscriptions, but after trying uBar and running into quite a few issues with it I wanted to build something that feels reliable and polished. I’m pretty much all-in on the Apple ecosystem now, even though I only switched ~6 months ago. My intention is to keep supporting boringBar regularly, as I use it every day myself.
Surely the regular Dock uses some hidden API. Could you try to trace it?
Having failed that, I'd look into trying to inspect (if possible, even we have to disable SIP) the dock itself. Have it do the work for us and read out its badges.
(Throwing random ideas out there, I'm sure you've thought of this)
Just spitballing here, but I know notifications are stored in a sqlite3 database. You might be able to query the count based on application type and use that?
Are they? I'm not so sure. If they are you could set a watcher on it to receive filesystem notifications when it changes.
I think you can get the info from LaunchServices using `lsappinfo` command.