Help me understand (and maybe control) notifications

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1

I haven’t bothered about this since the transition to Discourse, but the situation with notifications is kind of annoying, and I would like to find out more about how it works, and maybe change my settings (if possible).

Currently, I have deleted all the old “unread” notifications, which I assumed were from before Discourse. All of the “read” notifications are still there, and they show up when I click on my avatar. I don’t know if there’s a way to tell whether the top notification(s) are read or unread, except by relying on my memory.

I wish the “read” notifications would not appear under my avatar. Is there a way to do that? Lacking that, is there a way to tell whether the top notification is read or unread?

p.s. I’m not talking about email notifications, I have those turned off.

2

Hopefully these 2 older posts help somewhat.

Some related FAQ stuff:
You can turn off the alerts with ease. Go down to where is says Tracking or Watching and change it to normal.

How do I unsubscribe from a thread?
Both for a Computer & Mobile should be the same.

There is a Watching or Tracking button on the page to the left side below the last post. Click that and choose Normal

Might be more here: Opinions about forums on the SDMB - #29 by What_Exit

& here:

3

Those aren’t really what I’m asking. The process of generating notifications is fine, and I think I understand it. But notifications stick around after I have read them, and that’s what I would like to change.

When I have some notifications, there is a number of unread responses by my avatar at the upper right, say it’s 5. So I click on the avatar and start going through the notifications, but those that I have already clicked on are still there, and after two or three, I may get confused as to how many and which notifications are left. So I would prefer if, once I have clicked on a notification, it would disappear from that list under my avatar.

I’m not asking for a software change, I would just like to know if there is a setting that would make those “read” notifications go away.

4

I think I had a whole long conversation about this not long after the changeover; and the answer appeared to be no, there was no way to clear out old notifications and make them disappear. I eventually stopped being annoyed by it.

Any of them I haven’t clicked on show up in a somewhat different color; at least, in Straight Dope Light on a desktop. It’s not different enough to jump out at you, but I can see it once I figured out what to look for. [ETA: it’s not the notifications themselves that are in a different color, it’s the background color behind them. There’s a sort of slightly darker box containing anything I haven’t clicked on.]

5

Yes, I hadn’t really paid attention, but now I see that the background is blue when they are un-read, and then changes to white when they are read.

I think that counts as issue resolved. Thanks all.