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When I click an inbox message on my mobile browser (Firefox with uBlock), the message is not consistently marked as read.

I also can't reproduce it consistently, but it seems to happen when I click the title instead of anywhere else.

Takes a couple of attempts: marking the top message as unread, then clicking its title. One out of three times it doesn't get marked as read, but it takes me to the according post every time.

Edit: I now have to click almost every notification at least twice, it's getting pretty annoying.

Is this being looked at? I had to click a notification five times now to get it marked as read.

Edit: just now I received a comment notification, and upon clicking it, my entire inbox was marked as read, but the (1) remained even while the new page with the comment had loaded. Is this annoyance still being looked at?

Edit: we're a couple months into this feature, and today I had to click an inbox item five (5) times to get it marked as read. Please look into this.

Edit: yet another month since my last edit and just now I had to click a notification three times to get it marked as read. Please fix this.

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  • 7
    I've noticed it as well. And yes, very hard to reproduce but occasionally I open the notifications bar, click on the notification visit the page where it originated (thus I've definitely clicked on the link) and then I still see the notification as unread. That's a plain left-click, not even trying to open in a new tab. The page I am currently at reloads. On a PC also using FF (although I don't think the browser matters).
    – VLAZ
    Commented Apr 12, 2023 at 20:29
  • @VLAZ and of course now it happens on the first try with this notification from you :D Glad I'm not the only one. I also didn't specifically aim for the title this time, so that may be a red herring.
    – CodeCaster
    Commented Apr 12, 2023 at 20:33
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    It's happened over 15 times for me, the last 2 weeks. Definitely happened on mobile, and I'm quite sure it's been happening on the desktop too. (Safari on both)
    – Andreas moved to Codidact
    Commented Apr 12, 2023 at 21:24
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    Honestly I don't think I've been able to make the notification show up as read on mobile without marking all as read (mobile Safari).
    – fyrepenguin
    Commented Apr 13, 2023 at 2:08
  • Personally, I keep notification when I receive multiple comment or informations from same post, so it keep > 0 even if it should not; Could this be related?
    – Elikill58
    Commented Apr 13, 2023 at 7:00
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    @Elikill58 that's different - if you receive multiple replies to a comment, they are all grouped and show the last one. If you had, for example, three grouped notifications you'd get a count of unread as 3 and if you mark one as read (even by visiting it) you'd get a new count of 2. You'd also see the second to last message as unread in the notification bar (and the third one will show up as read).
    – VLAZ
    Commented Apr 13, 2023 at 7:05
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    @CodeCaster With the old version one at least knew what it will do, not such random behaviour as it is now.
    – samcarter_is_at_topanswers.xyz
    Commented Apr 13, 2023 at 12:16
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    The old behaviour ─ automatically marking everything as read when you open the inbox ─ was much better. Nothing on Stack Overflow is so urgent that I need to be told about it multiple times in case I forgot the first time, and typically when I open the inbox it's to click on everything to open things in tabs anyway. The new behaviour requires more clicking, more accurate clicking because the "mark as read" icon is tiny (and if you miss it, then your click navigates away from the page instead), and is still buggy.
    – kaya3
    Commented Apr 17, 2023 at 16:47
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    @kaya3 No, it wasn't. I'd have missed a lot of notifications that way. For instance, when I have 20 new notifications, having them all marked as read at the moment I open the inbox would be terrible. It guarantees that I will miss something. I do agree that the "mark as read" button is too small, though. Holding some key while clicking anywhere on the notification, should mark it as read.
    – Andreas moved to Codidact
    Commented Apr 28, 2023 at 20:51
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    @Andreasdetestscensorship From my perspective, if you have 20 notifications at once, then most of them probably don't really need your attention anyway. Particularly since the new inbox actually shows the comment inline. But if I really did need to respond to all 20, then I would open 20 tabs, and then my browser keeps track of which ones I've yet to deal with.
    – kaya3
    Commented Apr 28, 2023 at 21:21
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    @kaya3 I have personal experience with 20 notifications at once, all needing attention. Even so, with just 5 at once, it’s annoying that they are marked as read before I’ve actually read them. Perhaps the solution is a per-account toggle, so that both of us can have the functionality we prefer.
    – Andreas moved to Codidact
    Commented Apr 28, 2023 at 21:45
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    Clicking to go to a messages opens the envelope. Clicking to open in another tab should also open the envelope, but doesn't. And when refresh to 0 wouldn't change the inbox, it shouldn't be shown. The interface/workflow is poor.
    – philipxy
    Commented May 7, 2023 at 22:35
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    @philipxy: Generally, left-clicking to open in the same tab or middle-clicking to open in a new tab should both automatically mark the notification as read. (However, right-clicking and selecting "Open in new tab/window" doesn't mark the notification as read.)
    – V2Blast
    Commented May 9, 2023 at 16:43
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    There is a rough workaround for if you want to make sure you open a notification and also mark it as read: click and hold the mouse button until the notification changes to read, then release and the browser would follow the link.
    – VLAZ
    Commented Nov 9, 2023 at 11:14
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    Cross-site duplicates/related: "I'm clicking the same message multiple times to get it to clear, is it broken, or is something else happening?" and "Inbox count badge doesn't disappear when clicking on last notification"
    – Makyen Mod
    Commented Feb 14 at 20:26

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
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I've been able to reproduce this intermittently on both mobile and desktop.

Workarounds:

  1. Manually click the mail icon in the inbox popup corresponding to the notification you are going to navigate to, then click the link to navigate to the page that caused the notification.
  2. "Click and hold the mouse button until the notification changes to read, then release and the browser would follow the link" – workaround provided by VLAZ in a comment on the question.
  3. Use a mouse click appropriate to your OS (e.g., Ctrl-click or middle-click) to open the link to the page that caused the notification in a new tab or window instead of the same tab. This doesn't work when using the link context menu to select an action.

Cause

There may be additional causes which I have not observed.

What I've seen cause this is a race condition when you use the link in the inbox popup to navigate in the same tab to the page that caused the notification. A POST is initiated in JavaScript to "/topbar/mark-inbox-as-read" in the mousedown handler when the user presses the mouse button down, then navigation to the new page is initiated as the default link action, which happens after the mouse button is released, without waiting for a response from the POST. Navigating to a new page causes the browser to destroy the context in which the prior page was operating. If the destruction of that context happens fast enough, then the POST is canceled prior to making it out of the browser and onto the network. Alternately, it's possible that the browser sends the POST, but tears down the TCP connection and the server, or the network stack in the user's device, recognizes this and halts processing. I didn't try to observe what actually gets out to the network, because the solution (make sure the servers get and complete the POST) is the same regardless of what's currently making it out of the machine/device.

There are a variety of possible solutions. Three possibilities off the top of my head are:

  1. Delay the navigation until the POST returns a response.
  2. Indicate as part of the navigation's request for the new page that the inbox entry should be marked read.
  3. Set a flag in localStorage that JavaScript in the destination page checks and reissues the POST.

There are, of course, other methods of ensuring that the servers are notified that the inbox entry should be marked read.

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  • Great debugging!
    – user2554330
    Commented Nov 14, 2023 at 19:15
  • IMO, possible solution 2. makes the most sense. It means that if you visit a URL that points to "Comment X on post Y" it would always be marked as read which I think nicely covers some use-cases like - navigating to that comment outside of notifications (e.g., there was a link to it) which then makes the notification obsolete because it's been seen. It also makes it work via right-click -> open in new tab which currently isn't covered but it's how users interact with sites. Essentially, it means that however you get to something that issued a notification, the notification should be cleared.
    – VLAZ
    Commented Nov 15, 2023 at 8:07
3

This issue should now be resolved. Please let us know if it comes up again.

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    It's fixed for me! :D
    – Quack E. Duck
    Commented Jul 2 at 14:53
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    Inbox is no longer immediately marking item as read when middle-clicking to open in new tab - I suspect it's a result of this fix. Middle click or even ctrl+left click both do not mark the notification as read any more.
    – VLAZ
    Commented Jul 2 at 15:20
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    @VLAZ thanks for bringing this to our attention, looking into it.
    – Sasha StaffMod
    Commented Jul 2 at 15:24
  • When I middle-click on an item inbox title it opens a tab but doesn't mark the item as read & makes a refresh(0) appear, which however when clicked does fix the envelope icons & disappear. Moreover as I have commented before refresh(0) should never happen, since it says there is nothing to refresh, so I shouldn't have to click or be told.
    – philipxy
    Commented Jul 9 at 5:15

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