Bug: ghost notifications

[jackrosenthal]

See the screenshot. I must have 5 notifications I cannot see, as the bell has the blue dot, and the pagination shows I'm viewing notifications "1-0 of 5".

Note I've tried clearing browser cache already.

[thinkjrs]

I shouldn't have any unread notifications or I have an unread notification I am unable to see. This doesn't seem device-based to me, as I'm getting the same notification behavior in the Github iOS app.

Exactly similar scenario from me @jackrosenthal:

I'm currently on Chrome 95.0.4638.54 running on an arm-based mac. I also get the same "ghost" notification via the iOS app:

[Seggan]

Can confirm, except for me its 1 notification

[kwent]

Can confirm here as well with 1 notification

[cleonardcleonardc5214]

Thanks for the sharing

[Lockszmith-GH]

Same here, not device specific, or app specific, or network environment specific.
Screenshots in the community post I asked about it (before I discovered feedback):

https://github.community/t/blue-bell-stating-you-have-unread-notifications-but-i-cant-see-or-clean-it-up/211714

[thinkjrs]

I've been careful over the last few days to monitor this and can reproduce every time I clear out my inbox checking "done" on each item.

Two observations:

• I am left with a single ghost notification on whatever device on which I cleared the notifications.
• Other devices do not show the ghost notification blue dot, but do indicate an errant inbox count, while concurrently logged in, even on the same machine. See below.

Firefox used to clear notifications:

Chrome logged in at the same time:

I can also confirm that the mobile applications behave as Chrome does, above.

[GrimLink]

I am also experiencing this bug.
I also tried to clear any browser cache, nothing works.

[pizzolante]

I also have 2 ghost notification from this repo

edit: I've revoked all my other session and still have blue dot

[Seggan]

Where?

[Lockszmith-GH]

right my bad - this is the only way to leave feedback for GitHub - strange that they don't expose an Issues section to the world

[hanskellner]

Experiencing the same issue on Safari v15.1

Notifications bell has blue dot and count is "1-0 of 2". Clearing cache doesn't change the outcome.

[Seggan]

Now the unreads disappeared...

[Lockszmith-GH]

so whatever github did on their end, cleared up your account from this issue ?
Because it's still shows on mine.

[Seggan]

Yep. As far as I remember I did not do anything, I just noticed it randomly.

[pizzolante]

Seem solved here. If have more than 25, can truly select all and mark as read.

[Gitoffthelawn]

I have many notifications in my Inbox that I don't want moved to Done. Fortunately, I have read all of them, so none are marked as Unread.

I came up with a solution that worked better for me, and may help others too: Instead of marking a bunch of Inbox items as Done, I selected all notifications in the Inbox and marked them as Unread. I then selected them all again, and marked them as Read. This removed the troublesome stuck unread notifications caused by the GitHub bug.

The ghost repositories are still listed in the notification page's Repositories list, but I imagine they will eventually disappear as real notification cause them to get pushed out of that list.

[mschilli87]

Another option might be to (temporarily) use 'save' (bookmark) for those Inbox messages that are not 'done'.

[nxrighthere]

Thanks for the fix! This bug is so annoying.

[tqk2811]

not work for me

[tawfique02]

Awesome. It works properly. ☺️😋

[metalelf0]

Still seeing this issue on my end, and I can't fix it cause I only have 13 items in "Done". I've no clue where this ghost notification is coming from!

[CTimmerman]

Try grouping notifications by repository and using the "Mark as done" button of the repository row:

[S4GU4R0]

@Swoorup That finally worked for me too. I did this:

• Goto Done.
• Select all
• Move to inbox
• Goto Inbox
• Select all
• Mark as unread
• Mark as Done

That then finally fixed the ussue!

Thank you, that worked for me.

Some people mentioned GitHub ignoring this discussion and that bugs should be actually fixed without digging for ridiculous workarounds. I learned folks can open a ticket here: https://support.github.com/tickets/personal/0

[TimoLin]

@Swoorup That finally worked for me too. I did this:

• Goto Done.
• Select all
• Move to inbox
• Goto Inbox
• Select all
• Mark as unread
• Mark as Done

That then finally fixed the ussue!

Holy moly, you're my saver

[mschilli87]

@S4GU4R0:

...bugs should be actually fixed without digging for [...] workarounds

Digging is right word. @Lockszmith-GH posted the solution shared here in 2021 already but still people seem to miss it and come up with their own (often much more involved) solutions.

[iandoesallthethings]

@Swoorup That finally worked for me too. I did this:

• Goto Done.
• Select all
• Move to inbox
• Goto Inbox
• Select all
• Mark as unread
• Mark as Done

That then finally fixed the ussue!

Holy moly, you're my saver

AHA, I got it to work. The key is to have more than one page of notifications in your inbox so clicking select all offers to select all of them, which includes the ghost notification. Finally clear.

[metalelf0]

No unfortunately it's grouped as a single thread. Thanks anyway and sorry for the delay! Il gio 6 gen 2022, 16:15 Seggan ***@***.***> ha scritto:

…

Reply again, I marked the earlier one as done — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#6874 (reply in thread)>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AABAGR3QGOPAJ62BX5HXZP3UUWW2XANCNFSM5G3Z3G5Q> . Triage notifications on the go with GitHub Mobile for iOS <https://apps.apple.com/app/apple-store/id1477376905?ct=notification-email&mt=8&pt=524675> or Android <https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.github.android&referrer=utm_campaign%3Dnotification-email%26utm_medium%3Demail%26utm_source%3Dgithub>. You are receiving this because you commented.Message ID: ***@***.***>

[Lockszmith-GH]

and another one

[solhuebner]

Same issue / opened a ticket today

[Lockszmith-GH]

Did you try this? #6874 (reply in thread)

[solhuebner]

Thanks for the suggestions but I need to be honest here for a moment. THEY need to fix it :) There are a lot of people affected and opened tickets. Mine was half fixed by sending me API call instructions that at least got rid of the "you have new notifications" icon but the count is still off... I mean what should I expect from an MS-owned company. Have you seen their patch days? ;) The support should involve one or more of the affected people (live session), fix the crap and give them a Github badge. It COULD be so easy but they just waste our time. Sorry for the rant but this is not one of those one-person open source projects.

[Lockszmith-GH]

Oh I agree! But realistically, I doubt they will ever approach someone for a live session. It would be too easy.

[alimd]

Same issue with 4 ghost nitifications 😭

[Lockszmith-GH]

While we all really wish GitHub would fix this, realistically, by the way they ignored this thread completely, it probably will not be anytime soon.

As of now, the following is the only workaround that was succesful, but it requires you have enough notifications to switch on:
#6874 (reply in thread)

[alimd]

Thank you, yes its work for me, probably give Microsoft's kids the responsibility of making github notifications ;)

[djc]

I filed a GitHub support issue about this and got a response with a pretty good workaround:

The curl command below will mark all of your notifications as read and, with any luck, will take care of that phantom message for you.​

curl -X PUT
    -H "Accept: application/vnd.github.v3+json" \
    -H "Authorization: token $TOKEN" \
     https://api.github.com/notifications \
    -d '{"last_read_at":"2022-05-31T00:00:00Z"}'

A few things to note:

• In order to use this command a Personal Access Token (PAT) will be required and $TOKEN needs to be replaced by a personal access token you can create here: https://github.com/settings/tokens/new. Creating a Personal Access Token also has the steps to create a token. After it is created, replace $TOKEN in the command with your new PAT.
• Note: Please ensure that the PAT has the notifications scope.
• Please update the date and time to your current date and note the time values must be in ISO 8601 format: YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SSZ.

Cleaned up my ghost notification at least!

[dreampuf]

Thanks!

[meeh0w]

Thank you!!! it was driving me crazy.

[gruvw]

Check out this solution, it only uses the gh CLI (no access token, no minimum number of done notifications) https://github.com/orgs/community/discussions/6874#discussioncomment-14737364

[neoneye]

The curl command didn't work for me. I still see the unread notification badge.

[answer-huang]

Thank you!!! This is save my life.

[SDAravind]

Ghost is back! What is github doing about this?

[Maxou44]

Same issue on my side !

[Gitoffthelawn]

Ghost is back! What is github doing about this?

Apparently the same thing they have been doing about it the last 4 years. Nothing.

[cyanmint]

it's quite weird that those who send ghost notifications to us seems to be the same
i've got a ghost notification from gitcoin-mail-notification/gitcoin.com
i just wonder why they have to mention us in their own private repo

[Voltra]

it's quite weird that those who send ghost notifications to us seems to be the same
i've got a ghost notification from gitcoin-mail-notification/gitcoin.com
i just wonder why they have to mention us in their own private repo

Oh the answer is pretty simple: they're doing phishing

[Vanuan]

They deal with spam by hiding it from UI, but the underlying model is still there and the messages are still unread. I was "lucky" enough to report gitcointeam scam and mark it as read, but there are two other scammy mentions that I didn't catch and they linger in unread.

GitHub is going through the process of enshittification since microsoft has bought it. I guess time to switch to GitLab, but they don't have deep pockets to subsidize free users and the network effects make switching costs high.

[cristan]

I can at least reproduce the issue. I got a spam notification from a github repo. This repo was then promptly deleted, but now the notification is still here and I can't mark it as read.

For me, the workaround was selecting everything in the notifications inbox and pressing the done button.

[jacks0n9]

still getting this issue. it's been four years, microsoft...

[tqk2811]

fix it please

[mschilli87]

@tqk2811: Try this.

[SDAravind]

it doesn't work

[tqk2811]

this worked

[cschuchardt88]

If you have clicked and changed to the Try new experience in Files Changed in a github review. This notification bug happens.

Clicking this Causes It

Switching back doesn't fix it either.

[mschilli87]

@cschuchardt88: This bug is four years old. The 'new experience' feature did not exist back then. So it cannot be the root cause.

Either way, this hack has worked since 2021 to get rid of the 'ghost notifications'.

[g-i-o-r-g-i-o]

I solved using this, thanks to the author

https://github.com/orgs/community/discussions/6874#discussioncomment-14591666

[g-i-o-r-g-i-o]

@g-i-o-r-g-i-o:

Thanks a lot but it didn't work for me.

How come? At what step did it fail?

It didn't erase all the notifications, probabably because I had a notification from a ghost / banned repo?

[mschilli87]

Hard to imagine as it worked for everyone else so far. Did the 'select all X notifications' (with X >25) link appear for you? And did you click on 'Done' on the top, not the bottom?

[g-i-o-r-g-i-o]

Hard to imagine as it worked for everyone else so far. Did the 'select all X notifications' (with X >25) link appear for you? And did you click on 'Done' on the top, not the bottom?

yes

[mschilli87]

Next time I get fished by some BS-coin-repo, I'll try myself if it still works.

[g-i-o-r-g-i-o]

Next time I get fished by some BS-coin-repo, I'll try myself if it still works.

I had this notifications

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45353789

[jianchang512]

The deleted Curry @ a lot of people, which caused it. It’s hard to imagine that it’s been a bug for 4 years and it’s not fixed.

[Gitoffthelawn]

It’s hard to imagine that it’s been a bug for 4 years and it’s not fixed.

It's Microsoft. Image it. It's been over 10 years, and Microsoft still hasn't been able to dark theme the control panel in Windows 10 or Windows 11.

Any competent programmer could get that done in no time. Heck, they could just sub-contract it out, and get it done for less than the cost of a single executive retreat. Much less. Their actions (and inactions) make their priorities clear, and to me, it seems that quality software isn't at the top of the list. But their executives sure do live nicely!

[matifali]

For anyone still facing this use

gh api /notifications -X PUT -f last_read_at="$(date -u +"%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%SZ")"

[mschilli87]

Or simply this. 😉

'Simply' because the above assume gh being installed and setup including API access, which requries way more than five clicks.

[danielhoherd]

Extending this gh api code a bit, you can mark only the spam notifications as read while leaving all your other notifications in tact. This does not clear them out of the sidebar, but it does keep them from showing up as unread:

gh api /notifications -X GET |
  jq -r '.[] | "\(.id) \(.repository.full_name)"'

Then find the ID of the notifications of the jerks who spammed you and run…

gh api /notifications/threads/19172999942 -X PATCH

Then ask yourself why a $4 trillion dollar company can't do this for all of us even when our companies pay them money.

If Github was opensource this problem would be fixed by now.

[gruvw]

I have a fix that just uses the gh CLI tool: gh api /notifications -X GET | jq -r '.[].id' | xargs -I {} gh api /notifications/threads/{} -X PATCH

No need for a minimum of done notifications or to generate an access token, just running the command above got rid of ghost notifications for me.

[gruvw]

yes but @mschilli87, I don't think there is a need for you to post a comment under so many answers in this discussion. The workaround you post about is good for most, but not for all users. It's just getting a little bit noisy here having your workaround posted so many times in this thread... Don't worry if someone is reading this thread, they will definitely find the solution you posted. I don't think there is a need to repost it so much.

[mschilli87]

@gruvw:

I am only posting when somebody else does, so I don't think you can blame the 'noisyness' of this discussion on me. But I will refrain from posting in the future. I only had the best intentions. If you feel like your assessment

[I]f someone is reading this thread, they will definitely find the solution you posted[.]

is not valid any more, feel free to mention me here.
Otherwise I won't see any response as I'll unsubscribe - I have a workaround, I doubt Microsoft will ever care enough to actually fix this, and if my links to the fix do more harm than good, then there is no reason for me to keep getting notified about replies in this discussion (unless they explicitly mention me).

[yhan219]

This works for me, thank you very much. What needs to be mentioned is that if the number in the left Inbox is 3, then it needs to be executed 3 times.

[ctntc]

PowerShell Version for those not on Linux (courtesy of Copilot):

gh api /notifications -X GET | ConvertFrom-Json | ForEach-Object { gh api "/notifications/threads/$($_.id)" -X PATCH }

[k0pernikus]

@ctntc @gruvw Thank you so much, this

gh api /notifications -X GET | ConvertFrom-Json | ForEach-Object { gh api "/notifications/threads/$($_.id)" -X PATCH }

finally removed my ghost notification I was stuck with for years!

[nuintun]

Does anyone know how to fix the issue with Subscriptions? I have unsubscribed from all Subscriptions, but it still shows that there are 6!

[Lockszmith-GH]

Did you try this?

[nuintun]

It's not working.

[millievn]

same issue now and fixed by this. https://stackoverflow.com/a/73649800/11821819

[neoneye]

I was mentioned in 3 crypto scam repos. These repos was reported and deleted. I still see notification from these deleted repos. There are 0 items in my inbox, yet the badge shows 3 notifications. There is no way to mark these as deleted or flag them.

[danielhoherd]

The move-to-inbox method worked for me in this case. https://github.com/orgs/community/discussions/6874#discussioncomment-14591666

[Voltra]

It's annoying to say, but yeah the subscribing to a big repo for a few hours and then moving everything to the inbox to select absolutely all, mark them as read (and then as done) is the only "proper" way to go about getting rid of those ghost notifications fn

[jacks0n9]

microsoft FIX THIS FUCKING ISSUE

[neoneye]

The problem is that there are zero items in the inbox.

These are the repos that I was mentioned in. The notifications from these repos wont go away.

[g-i-o-r-g-i-o]

I had a ghost repo too, I solved with this

https://github.com/orgs/community/discussions/6874#discussioncomment-14591666

The problem is that there are zero items in the inbox.

These are the repos that I was mentioned in. The notifications from these repos wont go away. ![Screenshot 2025-10-28 at 13 49 16](https://private-user-

[danielhoherd]

Oh nice! That "move to inbox" technique worked for me! Now don't know what issues and PRs I was supposed to respond to though.

[neoneye]

Thank you @g-i-o-r-g-i-o running the bash script that did indeed reset the notifications. Yay. Normality almost restored.

However it didn't clear the scam repos that still appears in my repositories list.

[ssomers]

Same here, after a struggle to make the gh command run.

You do need to generate an access token for gh, though it can possibly be done for you via the default method of device activation in a web browser. I initially declined because the range of permissions it requested scared me, and when I try it now, github says all is fine but gh says "Bad credentials". The alternative of entering a fine-grained token access token yields "gh: Resource not accessible by personal access token (HTTP 403)". What it needs is a classic access token, and gh requires it to have lots of access (beyond "notifications" which seemed enough to me). But you can just delete that access token once used.

[Gitoffthelawn]

Dear Microsoft:

Why hasn't Microsoft fixed this easily reproducible issue that has been well-document for years? Please select an answer below:

1. Microsoft doesn't care about developers, users, or customers.
2. Microsoft doesn't know what the letters UX stand for.
3. Microsoft is too incompetent to fix this issue.
4. Microsoft needs all their products to suck "just enough" so they don't attain a complete monopoly.

[neoneye]

So I ran this script and I got the ghost notifications cleared.

Now the repos still remain at top of my repository list. How to clear them from this list?