Managing notifications from your inbox

Use your inbox to quickly triage and sync your notifications across email and mobile.

In this article

About your inbox

To use the notifications inbox on GitHub and GitHub Mobile, you must enable web and mobile notifications in your notification settings. For more information, see Configuring notifications.

To access your notifications inbox, in the upper-right corner of any page, click .

Your inbox shows all of the notifications that you haven't unsubscribed to or marked as Done. You can customize your inbox to best suit your workflow using filters, viewing all or just unread notifications, and grouping your notifications to get a quick overview.

By default, your inbox will show read and unread notifications. To only see unread notifications, click Unread or use the is:unread query.

Triaging options

You have several options for triaging notifications from your inbox.

Triaging optionDescription
SaveSaves your notification for later review. To save a notification, to the right of the notification, click .

Saved notifications are kept indefinitely and can be viewed by clicking Saved in the sidebar or with the is:saved query. If your saved notification is older than 5 months and becomes unsaved, the notification will disappear from your inbox within a day.
DoneMarks a notification as completed and removes the notification from your inbox. You can see all completed notifications by clicking Done in the sidebar or with the is:done query. Notifications marked as Done are saved for 5 months.
UnsubscribeAutomatically removes the notification from your inbox and unsubscribes you from the conversation until you are @mentioned, a team you're on is @mentioned, or you're requested for review.
ReadMarks a notification as read. To only view read notifications in your inbox, use the is:read query. This query doesn't include notifications marked as Done.
UnreadMarks notification as unread. To only view unread notifications in your inbox, use the is:unread query.

To see the available keyboard shortcuts, see Keyboard shortcuts.

Before choosing a triage option, you can preview your notification's details first and investigate. For more information, see Triaging a single notification.

Triaging multiple notifications at the same time

To triage multiple notifications at once, select the relevant notifications and use the drop-down to choose a triage option.

Screenshot of the "Notifications" page. A drop-down menu is highlighted with an orange outline.

Default notification filters

By default, your inbox has filters for when you are assigned, participating in a thread, requested to review a pull request, or when your username is @mentioned directly or a team you're a member of is @mentioned.

Customizing your inbox with custom filters

You can add up to 15 of your own custom filters.

  1. In the upper-right corner of any page, click .

    Screenshot of the right corner of the header of GitHub. An inbox icon has a blue dot, indicating that there are unread notifications.

  2. To open the filter settings, in the left sidebar, next to "Filters", click .

    Tip

    You can quickly preview a filter's inbox results by creating a query in your inbox view and clicking Save, which opens the custom filter settings.

  3. Add a name for your filter and a filter query. For example, to only see notifications for a specific repository, you can create a filter using the query repo:octocat/open-source-project-name reason:participating. You can also add emojis with a native emoji keyboard. For a list of supported search queries, see Supported queries for custom filters.

    Screenshot showing notification filters. Two input fields, with an example name and filter query filled in, are highlighted with an orange outline.

  4. Click Create.

Custom filter limitations

Custom filters do not currently support:

  • Full text search in your inbox, including searching for pull request or issue titles
  • Distinguishing between the is:issue, is:pr, and is:pull-request query filters. These queries will return both issues and pull requests.
  • Creating more than 15 custom filters
  • Changing the default filters or their order
  • Search exclusion using NOT or -QUALIFIER

Supported queries for custom filters

These are the types of filters that you can use:

  • Filter by repository with repo:
  • Filter by discussion type with is:
  • Filter by notification reason with reason:

Supported repo: queries

To add a repo: filter, you must include the owner of the repository in the query: repo:owner/repository. An owner is the organization or the user who owns the GitHub asset that triggers the notification. For example, repo:octo-org/octo-repo will show notifications triggered in the octo-repo repository within the octo-org organization.

Supported is: queries

To filter notifications for specific activity on GitHub, you can use the is query. For example, to only see repository invitation updates, use is:repository-invitation, and to only see Dependabot alerts, use is:repository-vulnerability-alert.

  • is:check-suite
  • is:commit
  • is:gist
  • is:issue-or-pull-request
  • is:release
  • is:repository-invitation
  • is:repository-vulnerability-alert

For information about reducing noise from notifications for Dependabot alerts, see Configuring notifications for Dependabot alerts.

You can also use the is: query to describe how the notification was triaged.

  • is:saved
  • is:done
  • is:unread
  • is:read

Supported reason: queries

To filter notifications by why you've received an update, you can use the reason: query. For example, to see notifications when you (or a team you're on) is requested to review a pull request, use reason:review-requested. For more information, see About notifications.

QueryDescription
reason:assignWhen there's an update on an issue or pull request you've been assigned to.
reason:authorWhen you opened a pull request or issue and there has been an update or new comment.
reason:commentWhen you commented on an issue or pull request.
reason:participatingWhen you have commented on an issue or pull request or you have been @mentioned.
reason:invitationWhen you're invited to a team, organization, or repository.
reason:manualWhen you click Subscribe on an issue or pull request you weren't already subscribed to.
reason:mentionYou were directly @mentioned.
reason:review-requestedYou or a team you're on have been requested to review a pull request.
reason:security-alertWhen a security alert is issued for a repository.
reason:state-changeWhen the state of a pull request or issue is changed. For example, an issue is closed or a pull request is merged.
reason:team-mentionWhen a team you're a member of is @mentioned.
reason:ci-activityWhen a repository has a CI update, such as a new workflow run status.

Dependabot custom filters

If you use Dependabot to keep your dependencies up-to-date, you can use and save these custom filters:

  • is:repository_vulnerability_alert to show notifications for Dependabot alerts.
  • reason:security_alert to show notifications for Dependabot alerts and security update pull requests.
  • author:app/dependabot to show notifications generated by Dependabot. This includes Dependabot alerts, security update pull requests, and version update pull requests.

For more information about Dependabot, see About Dependabot alerts.