Help: I have a notification for a non-existing repository

[TheBestPessimist]

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the repo which doesnt' exist (and i dont remember ever visiting it): https://github.com/gitcoinmanager/gitcoinco-dao

[TheBestPessimist]

a few other repos which don't exist, i don't remember ever visiting them, yet notifications show them in my list (visible in the screenshots):

• https://github.com/gitcoi/norg/
• https://github.com/paradigm-funds/paradigm

[zThorium]

It looks like your inbox badge is stuck on a notification from a repo that was renamed, transferred, or deleted. When that happens, the counter can linger even though no items show up in the list.

A few things you can try to clear it:

Force-clear unread notifications

Go to Notifications and click the … menu (top right) → Mark all as read.

If you prefer the API, you can also run:

curl -X PUT -H "Authorization: token <YOUR_TOKEN>" https://api.github.com/notifications

(This just marks everything as read—future notifications still work normally.)

Check saved/done and filters

Switch between All / Unread, and also check Saved and Done.

Remove any search/filter chips (e.g., repo:gitcoinmanager/gitcoinco-dao). Sometimes the left-hand repo counter updates slower than the message list.

Subscription cleanup

Visit Settings → Notifications → Subscriptions (or https://github.com/notifications/subscriptions
) and unwatch the repository/owner if it’s listed.

If the badge persists after the steps above, it’s probably a stuck record on GitHub’s side. In that case, I’d open a ticket with GitHub Support and include your screenshots and the repo name so they can flush the phantom notification.

Hope this helps!

[TheBestPessimist]

Thank you for the reply @zThorium

1. force-clear: i dont have "..." button on top right. So i can't do it:

2. Check saved/done and filters
3. Switch between All / Unread, and also check Saved and Done.

I've done both of these steps multiple times already without success :(.

4. Remove any search/filter chips (e.g., repo:gitcoinmanager/gitcoinco-dao

in my first picture, you can see i have no filters, yet the notifications is not shown. What else should i do?

5. Subscriptions cleanup: that doesn't seem to work either:

6. Open support ticket.

Before i do this, do you have any other ideas? Should i wait for github support people to see this thread?

[ArtyIF]

This answer might be helpful: https://github.com/orgs/community/discussions/82108#discussioncomment-9521903

Also check the comments for another answer if you have Github CLI installed. I still have the "gitcoin-member" in my notifications sidebar that I can't remove.

[travishorn]

Thanks, @ArtyIF. The solution you linked worked for me. I'm copying here below for others' convenience.

For anyone that has this issue - after contacting GitHub Support, they gave me the following steps to take in order to fix this:

• create a personal access token with the notifications scope: https://github.com/settings/tokens/new
• run these commands in your shell of choice:

export now=$(date +%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%SZ)
export TOKEN=<INSERT GITHUB PERSONAL ACCESS TOKEN HERE>
curl -H "Authorization: bearer $TOKEN" -X PUT -H "Accept: application/vnd.github.v3+json" https://api.github.com/notifications -d '{"last_read_at":"'"$now"'"}'

Worked perfectly for me to get rid of a stuck notification for a DMCA'd repository! Hope this helps! ☆*: .｡. o(≧▽≦)o .｡.:*☆

[TheBestPessimist]

Thank you, this worked

[drumtechphoto]

Thank you, this worked for me as well.
@travishorn @ArtyIF

Repo that had the issue/stuck notification: ycombinatorrr/ycombinator-notification

[remarcable]

Posting the comment below the answer here for reference:

easier way if you have the GitHub CLI installed:

gh api -X PUT /notifications

[eliot-akira]

Thank you so much for this comment, that phantom notification was bothering me for weeks. The token-authorized API request did the job. What a relief!

[TheBestPessimist]

Next question: is there a way to also completely unsubscribe from those repos?
Note: It cannot be done from UI.

gitcoinmanager/gitcoinco-dao
gitcoi/norg
paradigm-funds/paradigm

I don't want to see them there at all.

I already tried this API call:

### Unsubscribe from a GitHub repository
DELETE https://api.github.com/repos/paradigm-funds/paradigm/subscription
Authorization: Bearer REDACTED
Accept: application/vnd.github+json
User-Agent: http-client

But all i get is a 404:

{
  "message": "Not Found",
  "documentation_url": "https://docs.github.com/rest",
  "status": "404"
}

[TheBestPessimist]

I used this JS: script: https://github.com/orgs/community/discussions/6874?sort=new#discussioncomment-14481926

[lordofpipes]

It's been almost 2 years and this still isn't fixed? Why is Github allowing cryptocurrency spammers to break the notification system for profit?

[Pomax]

Because they have a "knowledge base" article for it that people get sent to when they try to contact github about it, which means their engineers haven't gotten any pressure to fix this in years now. So they don't even see that this is a problem anymore, because instead of getting bug reports for it, users instead end up in the docs, which tells them to just live with it. (not even joking, after you start filing a bug, it first generates you a copilot response that says "Don't worry, this is a known limitation when a repository is no longer accessible. Here's how you can reduce or remove these notifications" and then the only way to remove them is to clear-all, which is insane, and then you still can't remove the offending repo itself from the notification list, which is even more insane)

[stsandro]

One tip 💡: ask Claude Code to clear all your notifications via the command line tool. This fixed my problem!

[Pomax]

The problem with Claude (and really, any LLM) is that "it works for me" does not in any way guarantee that the same prompt yields the same behaviour for someone else. So this is much more dangerous advice than you probably thought it was.