Notifications - Unread notification does not show up

[rufer7]

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Bug

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https://github.com/notifications?query=is%3Aunread (Notifications) indicates that there is a pending (unread) notification. Symbol also indicates unread notification(s). However, when navigating to notifications, no notification shows up.

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[JIbald]

I have a similar problem, which is especially concerning, since this Organization is somewhat related to a Phishing Scam:
cointelegraph
I only realized this, since I received an email, which would explain, why no message is showing, but doesn't explain why it still shows up as unread. Also and maybe more importantly: I never starred / watched / cloned or contributed with/to this project
This is highly concerning.

EDIT: The repository seems to be private and it somehow added me as something. the github search-function shows results, but when clicking on them I get 404's, or suggestions to issues or PR's which also result in nothing.
SO I CANNOT REPORT ANY PARTICULAR REPO, OWNER, ISSUE OR ELSE
Since that is the only thing suggested by github, my hands are tied here.

[zeehio]

I suffer the same problem.

My guess is that the organization and/or repository was actually deleted by github, because it was reported.

They forgot to delete those notifications, and they are lingering invisible in our inbox.

I'd guess github needs to automatically "mark as read" all notifications from deleted repositories.

[jfullstackdev]

this is the workaround we used in the past, I don't know if it's exactly like that

https://github.com/orgs/community/discussions/6874?utm_source=chatgpt.com#discussioncomment-2859125

and also if that is the same bug, it means it's not yet fixed today by GitHub on the UI

[JIbald]

While this is somewhat helpful, I feel like it's solving a symptom instead of the underlying problem.
It's alarming that the described Method to grab emails via github and weaponize them for phishing campaigns, and giving them somewhat of a legitimacy by making them look like repository concerns.
Furthermore you cannot report any concrete Repository or Maintainer since all links seem to run into nothing.

[rufer7]

I don't even see where my notification is coming from... I would like to know where this notification that I can't see at all is coming from. Strange...

[jfullstackdev]

with those threads in the past, I'm sure, the GitHub Staff is aware of that but until now they are not yet fixed

well, in any deployed system, there are lingering bugs, we cannot make it perfect

[JIbald]

This is true, but the greater the 'deployed system' the greater the responsibility to make it secure.
You can't expect people to just linger on a bug that's evidently weaponized against users.
Especially since it's a known bug that has issues trailing back multiple years.
All we're doing is paying attention and thus making it more obvious to 'the GitHub staff'.

[raytroop]

same problem

[jieyouxu]

Another paper over the problem (same as the curl workaround) is to use the gh cli

gh api notifications -X PUT -F last_read_at=2025-09-22T00:00:00Z

Again, this is not a fix of the underlying problem, which GitHub hasn't fixed for probably years at this point?

[stakiran]

I'm experiencing the same issue.

I believe that when a repository that was mentioned becomes deleted or private after being mentioned, the notification at the mentioned destination becomes like this case.

As a countermeasure on GitHub's side, it would be to detect and remove notifications from repositories that have become invisible. At the very least, there should be a way to remove them. Currently, it seems there is no way to do so.

Image

[stakiran]

Duplicate?

https://github.com/orgs/community/discussions/174310

[rufer7]

Interestingly, my stale notification is gone in the meantime.

[ar-jan]

Same problem here

[dougg0k]

Same issue, from the gitcoin spam, probably the spam account got banned, and the notification with it.

Even if you select all notifications and mark as resolved, that does not include the one from it.

GH_PAGER="" gh api -X DELETE notifications/threads/(GH_PAGER="" gh api notifications --jq '.[] | select(.repository.name | test("gitcoin")) | .id')

[Pairman]

Safe for me receiving a notification from "gitcoin-team/gitcointeam".

[JoshuaMarcondes]

The same thing happened to me with gitcoin-team/gitcointeam

[stakiran]

I contacted GitHub support and received the following response:

• They are aware of the issue, but it is difficult to fix, and they cannot guarantee an immediate solution.
• As a temporary measure, they suggest clearing notifications via GitHub CLI or REST API.
  • This is also the method mentioned here.

[JIbald]

This is getting out of hand.
Using unoffical scripts can't possibly be a solution to this.
I'll wait for the official one.
Thanks for contacting support for all of us.