Inbox improvements: marking notifications as read/unread, and a filtered inbox view

Question

TL;DR: We're planning to make some changes to the inbox in a few weeks. You'll be able to mark individual notifications as read or unread, and to filter the inbox dropdown to show only unread notifications (or show all of them). We're also making some styling changes to make it easier to tell whether a notification is marked read or unread.

Why change the inbox?

One common complaint we've heard from our experienced users is that the inbox is difficult to use due to the notifications being immediately marked as read after opening the inbox dropdown. Statistics confirm that the problem exists: there are over 5k active users that have over 50 unread notifications, and even some of our active moderators have stopped using the inbox. Moreover, those stats don't even include people who just open and close their inbox without even reading their notifications, just to make the unread indicator go away.

We believe that the current functionality is holding the community back from deeper engagement with posts through notifications. Right now, notifications are marked as read immediately after opening the inbox, making it hard for users to read new notifications and participate on relevant posts.

What's being changed?

To address these issues, we're planning to release some new features for the inbox soon:

• The ability to toggle the read/unread status on individual inbox notifications
• The ability to toggle the inbox between showing all notifications and only unread notifications
• Style changes to help with distinguishing between read and unread notifications

Here's an example of what the inbox will look like when these improvements are released:

Marking notifications as read

In this update, opening the inbox will no longer automatically mark all notifications as read. Instead, unread notifications will be only marked as read if the user interacts with them. To mark a notification as read, you can do any of the following:

• Click (left click or middle click) on the notification to open it (which will also mark it as read):
  

• Left click on the closed-envelope icon ( ) on the right side of the notification to mark it as read without opening it.

• Click (left click or middle click) on the notification in the inbox tab of your stackexchange.com profile:
  

Users can also click the "Mark all as read" button at the top-right of the inbox dropdown on a site to mark all notifications as read at once:

Marking notifications as unread

Read notifications can be marked as unread by clicking on the open-envelope icon ( ) on the right side of the notification.

Other display changes

As you can see, we are introducing some changes in how read and unread notifications are displayed:

• In the inbox dropdown, read notifications are still clickable, but are now fully grayed out (including the link title), as shown above. There are no significant changes to how unread notifications look in the dropdown.

• Since users will also be able to see the unread status of notifications in the inbox on stackexchange.com as well, there will be a visible distinction between read and unread notifications there, very similar to the one in the dropdown:

  

  As with the dropdown, clicking on individual notifications in the global inbox on stackexchange.com will cause them to be marked as read. However, no additional interactions will be added to the inbox on stackexchange.com at this time.

Filtering notifications

We're also adding the functionality to filter the inbox to only unread notifications. Users can use the context menu in the top bar to toggle between viewing all notifications or only unread ones:

Note that the inbox dropdown only loads up to the 50 most recent notifications. Filtering the inbox to "Unread" will not load any additional notifications beyond that limit – it will just filter out unread ones. You can always see all of your notifications in the global inbox on stackexchange.com, so any users who have unread notifications outside of their 50 most recent notifications can find them there.

---

When and how will these changes be rolled out?

We're planning to release the first version of these inbox improvements within the next couple of weeks. We'll most likely roll these changes out in stages to ensure that everything's working properly; we'll make a new post to inform the community when we begin to roll those changes out.

We'll also be tracking metrics on usage of the new features to help us decide on further improvements in this area.

There should not be any changes to the way that email notifications work as a result of these changes to the inbox user interface.

How should we share feedback on these changes?

If you have any questions, suggestions, or other feedback regarding the planned inbox improvements we've described here, please post it in an answer below.

(As mentioned above, we'll make a new announcement once these changes are live; we'll direct bug reports and any additional feedback there at that time.)

Answer 1

It is great to at last see substantive updates to this venerable UI!

Now... How about some notifications API integration? It is pretty much the only reason anyone's still using the old mobile apps, and while it wouldn't help those beleaguered iPhone folks... Nothing will.

Answer 2

Moreover, those stats don't even include people who just open and close their inbox without even reading their notifications, just to make the unread indicator go away.

Hi, that's (partially) me. I like to think of the indicator as 'there's something new in your inbox', not as a 'there's something unread in your inbox'. So, I do open my inbox from time to time, check the new stuff, and if it's nothing urgent, I close my inbox again. No need for the bright red indicator to stay, and no need for me to actually read the notifications or mark them as read in a separate manual step.

Added on top of that, especially with this new functionality, I might end up deliberately marking some read notifications as 'unread' again, in a 'I need to check back on this in 6-8' reminder kind of way. I really, really don't want an indicator pretending there's something new to be seen to be there for the entire 6-8 though, yet this screenshot confirms that the latter would be the case and the indicator would stay.

So, I hereby request you to please still make the indicator go away once I have made the conscious decision to open the inbox but not mark as 'read' all of the messages there, I don't want to be notified of old, unread things, only of truly new things. I can catch up the old unread stuff later if need be, but it's nothing urgent and it's not something I need a bright red indicator for.

Answer 3

I can't wait, this will definitely help me in not forgetting important notifications, which all too often get drowned in the noise. (Yes, follow-post, I'm looking at you.)

Question: will these or similar improvements also be ported to the ♦ moderator inbox? Its behaviour tricked me in the past.

Answer 4

In the inbox dropdown, read notifications are still clickable, but are now fully grayed out (including the link title), as shown above. There are no significant changes to how unread notifications look in the dropdown.

As of now, the unread notifications are marked with a colored background and the read ones are simply white. I feel this distinction is good enough and it looks prettier to me:

In the new design I see pretty much the inverse of above:

1. It feels like the read notifications stand out more than the unread ones at first, but I'm not quite sure overall;
2. The new Inbox dropdown will look inconsistent with the Achievements dropdown.

Could you please not touch the design here? Or if you really want the read notifications to be grayed out, please leave the background white at least.

Answer 5

Bringing up an old feature request for consideration.

Sometimes people are jerks, and we get abusive posts into the inbox. Could there be some way to remove specific notifications from the inbox totally? This would be useful in dealing with the fallout of users being abusive. Maybe stuff that's flagged Rude or comments flagged unkind or worse.

Answer 6

My current workflow is to open the notifications once, Ctrl+click on each unread notification to open it in a background tab, then close to see them marked as read. Thanks for taking the initiative to improve this situation!

Allow me to suggest a feature that would really help: group notifications by post/topic!
Often I receive numerous notifications about edits, closures, comments, all on the same post, but intermingled with those from other posts. I need to visit that page only once to read them all, will I need to mark them as read individually? It would be great to have a button "Mark all <N> notifications as read that originated from the current page" or something.

Or to declutter the inbox a bit, do not show one notification per comment, just show one per post to say "Answer <Xyz> has <N> new comments, starting at …".

Answer 7

Can we add an option to filter on followed questions too? Either to include or exclude them from your view. If you follow a lot of active posts you get, obviously, a lot of notifications which usually aren't that important. They could easily drown that one comment on your post asking for clarification, which I would consider important.

Answer 8

^{As requested in the comment, this 'answer' has been converted into the question — Inbox improvements: providing more control over what appears in the dropdown list.}

With the outlined modifications, I'd like to see a way to get rid of (not show) notifications that I don't want to see anymore, and a way to keep (show) notifications that I do want to see in the dropdown list, for perhaps a month or so.

I see that notifications are kept forever — if I scroll down to the bottom of the drop-down (the last shown notification shown for me today is from 23rd September), then the 'show all notifications' link pops up (for me) 1616 pages of notifications dating back to September 2008. It would be helpful if that list could be searched — by date range, tags, user ID, as well as the content of the notification. Similar comments apply to searching through comments I've made, though the user ID would be for the recipient of the comment rather than the sender. (That gets tricky: for a comment to an answer, the comment could be addressed to another commentator, or the answerer, or the OP of the question. Additionally, over time, some people change the name associated with their ID, but the message content doesn't change. Mapping names becomes its own headache.)

Answer 9

The styles in StackOverflow dark mode have changed to use the same colour as :visited links for new, unread messages which is pretty much the opposite of what I'd expect to see.

body.theme-dark {
  --blue-700: hsl(206,90%,74%);
  --theme-link-color-visited: var(--blue-700);
  --theme-post-title-color-visited: var(--theme-link-color-visited);
}

a:visited {
  color: var(--theme-post-title-color-visited);
}

.topbar-dialog li.unread-item .unread-bold {
  font-weight: bold;
  color: var(--blue-700);
}

Aren't you trying to improve accessibility?

---

The same problem is present in the reputation dropdown as well

Answer 10

Please let us know what the UI will look like on smartphones by sharing screenshots. The screenshots in the post look as if they only apply to computers.

Answer 11

I have been (how should I put it?) distressed over my privacy for the past 2 days after reading Websockets can be used to spy on users' activity because of the apparent privacy risks that notifications cause (through the API).

My only question is: How do these upcoming changes make my privacy better, or worse?