Sometimes you may see a blue dot on your GitHub avatar, but can't find what unread notification it's referring to.
This is a trivial UI bug. You can see these "invisible" notifications in the terminal by using gh.
Ref.
After you've authorized your account, you could see the unread notifications by running:
gh api notifications -H "Accept: application/vnd.github.v3+json"
Then, you can update the last_read_at field to mark notifications as read:
gh api notifications -H "Accept: application/vnd.github.v3+json" -X PUT -f last_read_at=2024-08-07T00:00:00Z
And voila, the blue dot should disappear!
One such example is notifications from removed repositories.
Here's a sample output showing an "invisible" notification:
[
{
"id": "11206978932",
"unread": true,
"reason": "subscribed",
"updated_at": "2024-06-23T03:29:59Z",
"last_read_at": null,
"subject": {
"title": "Invitation to join overzealousquant/Quant-Leaks-Interview from overzealousquant",
"url": null,
"latest_comment_url": null,
"type": "RepositoryInvitation"
},
"repository": {
"id": 817075042,
"node_id": "R_kgDOMLOTYg",
"name": "Quant-Leaks-Interview",
"full_name": "overzealousquant/Quant-Leaks-Interview",
"private": true,
"owner": {
"login": "overzealousquant",
"id": 170038529,
"node_id": "U_kgDOCiKVAQ",
"avatar_url": "https://avatars.githubusercontent.com/u/170038529?v=4",
"gravatar_id": "",
"url": "https://api.github.com/users/overzealousquant",
"html_url": "https://github.com/overzealousquant",
"followers_url": "https://api.github.com/users/overzealousquant/followers",
"following_url": "https://api.github.com/users/overzealousquant/following{/other_user}",
"gists_url": "https://api.github.com/users/overzealousquant/gists{/gist_id}",
"starred_url": "https://api.github.com/users/overzealousquant/starred{/owner}{/repo}",
"subscriptions_url": "https://api.github.com/users/overzealousquant/subscriptions",
"organizations_url": "https://api.github.com/users/overzealousquant/orgs",
"repos_url": "https://api.github.com/users/overzealousquant/repos",
"events_url": "https://api.github.com/users/overzealousquant/events{/privacy}",
"received_events_url": "https://api.github.com/users/overzealousquant/received_events",
"type": "User",
"site_admin": false
},
"html_url": "https://github.com/overzealousquant/Quant-Leaks-Interview",
"description": null,
"fork": false,
"url": "https://api.github.com/repos/overzealousquant/Quant-Leaks-Interview",
"forks_url": "https://api.github.com/repos/overzealousquant/Quant-Leaks-Interview/forks",
"keys_url": "https://api.github.com/repos/overzealousquant/Quant-Leaks-Interview/keys{/key_id}",
"collaborators_url": "https://api.github.com/repos/overzealousquant/Quant-Leaks-Interview/collaborators{/collaborator}",
"teams_url": "https://api.github.com/repos/overzealousquant/Quant-Leaks-Interview/teams",
"hooks_url": "https://api.github.com/repos/overzealousquant/Quant-Leaks-Interview/hooks",
"issue_events_url": "https://api.github.com/repos/overzealousquant/Quant-Leaks-Interview/issues/events{/number}",
"events_url": "https://api.github.com/repos/overzealousquant/Quant-Leaks-Interview/events",
"assignees_url": "https://api.github.com/repos/overzealousquant/Quant-Leaks-Interview/assignees{/user}",
"branches_url": "https://api.github.com/repos/overzealousquant/Quant-Leaks-Interview/branches{/branch}",
"tags_url": "https://api.github.com/repos/overzealousquant/Quant-Leaks-Interview/tags",
"blobs_url": "https://api.github.com/repos/overzealousquant/Quant-Leaks-Interview/git/blobs{/sha}",
"git_tags_url": "https://api.github.com/repos/overzealousquant/Quant-Leaks-Interview/git/tags{/sha}",
"git_refs_url": "https://api.github.com/repos/overzealousquant/Quant-Leaks-Interview/git/refs{/sha}",
"trees_url": "https://api.github.com/repos/overzealousquant/Quant-Leaks-Interview/git/trees{/sha}",
"statuses_url": "https://api.github.com/repos/overzealousquant/Quant-Leaks-Interview/statuses/{sha}",
"languages_url": "https://api.github.com/repos/overzealousquant/Quant-Leaks-Interview/languages",
"stargazers_url": "https://api.github.com/repos/overzealousquant/Quant-Leaks-Interview/stargazers",
"contributors_url": "https://api.github.com/repos/overzealousquant/Quant-Leaks-Interview/contributors",
"subscribers_url": "https://api.github.com/repos/overzealousquant/Quant-Leaks-Interview/subscribers",
"subscription_url": "https://api.github.com/repos/overzealousquant/Quant-Leaks-Interview/subscription",
"commits_url": "https://api.github.com/repos/overzealousquant/Quant-Leaks-Interview/commits{/sha}",
"git_commits_url": "https://api.github.com/repos/overzealousquant/Quant-Leaks-Interview/git/commits{/sha}",
"comments_url": "https://api.github.com/repos/overzealousquant/Quant-Leaks-Interview/comments{/number}",
"issue_comment_url": "https://api.github.com/repos/overzealousquant/Quant-Leaks-Interview/issues/comments{/number}",
"contents_url": "https://api.github.com/repos/overzealousquant/Quant-Leaks-Interview/contents/{+path}",
"compare_url": "https://api.github.com/repos/overzealousquant/Quant-Leaks-Interview/compare/{base}...{head}",
"merges_url": "https://api.github.com/repos/overzealousquant/Quant-Leaks-Interview/merges",
"archive_url": "https://api.github.com/repos/overzealousquant/Quant-Leaks-Interview/{archive_format}{/ref}",
"downloads_url": "https://api.github.com/repos/overzealousquant/Quant-Leaks-Interview/downloads",
"issues_url": "https://api.github.com/repos/overzealousquant/Quant-Leaks-Interview/issues{/number}",
"pulls_url": "https://api.github.com/repos/overzealousquant/Quant-Leaks-Interview/pulls{/number}",
"milestones_url": "https://api.github.com/repos/overzealousquant/Quant-Leaks-Interview/milestones{/number}",
"notifications_url": "https://api.github.com/repos/overzealousquant/Quant-Leaks-Interview/notifications{?since,all,participating}",
"labels_url": "https://api.github.com/repos/overzealousquant/Quant-Leaks-Interview/labels{/name}",
"releases_url": "https://api.github.com/repos/overzealousquant/Quant-Leaks-Interview/releases{/id}",
"deployments_url": "https://api.github.com/repos/overzealousquant/Quant-Leaks-Interview/deployments"
},
"url": "https://api.github.com/notifications/threads/11206978932",
"subscription_url": "https://api.github.com/notifications/threads/11206978932/subscription"
}
]