Skip to main content

Command Palette

Search for a command to run...

Unread GitHub notification is killing me

The badge was always there but there was no notifications inside. Here's how to fix it.

Updated
2 min read
Unread GitHub notification is killing me

For a couple of weeks, if not months at this point, I’ve been feeling terrorized as I am someone who only subscribes to notifications that are of an interest to me. That is so, when I find myself on the GitHub website, I would intentionally click on them and be informed of any issues that matter to me.

However since late summer I’ve been seeing a badge of new notification but there was no way to clear it. I was hoping it’d go away by itself one day. I even tried the GitHub app on the phone. Nothing.

My OCD is unfortunately too big and it got to the point where I was ready to open a ticket and complain about it. But I must say they did a good job suggesting issues that might be related.

I click on the first one and quickly discover a pleasant idea - to use the API to mark all notifications as read.

Ref: https://github.com/orgs/community/discussions/6874#discussioncomment-2859125

Let’s try. I open my terminal in Warp, setup a GitHub token using 1password (I already use that) and make the cURL call.

TOKEN=$(op read op://Personal/GithubAccountItem/token)
curl -X PUT \
    -H "Accept: application/vnd.github.v3+json" \
    -H "Authorization: token $TOKEN" \
     https://api.github.com/notifications \
    -d '{"last_read_at":"2025-10-10T00:00:00Z"}'

Yayy, I feel relieved! I am no longer distracted and that matters a ton to me.

Unread GitHub notification is killing me