Preview GitHub activity in notifications without marking them as read

[jamiebuilds]

Using the GitHub Notifications API it should be possible to create a little popover like the one below to show unseen activity using the last_read_at date.

One of the biggest problems I have with lots of GitHub notifications is viewing them without marking them as read. Emails help this but they tend to get buried and are not organized by user/repo. GitHub notifications could use some love

[DrewML]

Oooh, that's a pretty good idea. I like it! This would require adding a settings panel, though (so users can enter their GitHub API key for private repo access). Sindre has tried to avoid adding a settings panel.

@sindresorhus thoughts? We could also add this for only public repos, but that might be a bit of a weird experience from a UX perspective when some items work on hover and others don't.

[jamiebuilds]

Public repos would be enough for me to be happy, those are the repos that have an unmanageable amount of notifications

[paulmolluzzo]

This is a really neat idea! If we go down the path of only showing this for public repos it might be worth indicating the ones that you can hover to preview. Maybe include the eye icon for the target to :hover on?

[sindresorhus]

Love it! I have the same issue as @thejameskyle. We can do public repos first and see.

[DrewML]

Started working on this tonight. I should have spotted this sooner, but the "Notifications API" requires an authentication token (which makes sense).

The notification link does include the ID of the comment that triggered the notification, so we can make a request to that page. However, I don't know if doing that is going to dismiss the notification. I'll wait for someone to reply to this thread so I have a new unread notification to test with 😎

[sindresorhus]

Reply

[DrewML]

Damn - hitting the URI at all dismisses the notification. I think the only way forward with this feature is providing users a way to add a GH API key.

[DrewML]

What do you think @sindresorhus? If we add the ability to enter an API key, it might open up an avenue to some other cool features we wouldn't be able to pull off without the API.

[sindresorhus]

Sure

[jamestalmage]

Ooh. If that's on the table, let's add a marker on the notifications page that differentiates notifications where you are @-mentioned. I would love to be able to prioritize what I read that way

[DrewML]

@jamestalmage Want to open a separate issue for that one? I can do the API-key work for this PR first, get that committed, and then we'll be able to work on this issue + your idea in parallel.

[DrewML]

Still have plans to finish out what I started on this. Just hitting some timing issues w/ moving + priorities on other projects.

[vadimdemedes]

Hey guys, I've implemented a different approach to this problem, the way I always wanted it to be - check out PR #284 and let me know what you think over there!

Idea by @thejameskyle is great and certainly looks nice, but sometimes I want to give a thread another glance to understand the context of another person's reply. Because of that, a popover wouldn't work for me. Instead, I decided to add "Mark as unread" buttons to the sidebar on every issue/pr page:

[jamiebuilds]

@sindresorhus did you intend to close this via #284?

[sindresorhus]

Nope. This is complementary to #284.

[hkdobrev]

@DrewML Do you still have plans to publish your work regarding the API token?

[fregante]

I see this as complementary to #181 into its own "Notifications Preview for GitHub" extension.