Unremovable "Ghost" Notification in Inbox

[babelllll]

Select Topic Area

Question

Body

I have a single unread notification that I cannot remove from my inbox. My notification count shows "1", but the inbox list is empty, preventing any action.

• The notification is from a repository that has likely been deleted: git-coin-com/gitcoincom.
• Because the notification does not render in the UI, I cannot select it to mark it as "Done".
• The "Select all" -> "Done" flow does not work, as the "Done" button never appears.
• Filtering by the repository and then trying to "Select all" also fails.

This is a UI bug that prevents the removal of a notification whose source is gone. Please manually clear this ghost notification from my account's backend data.

Thank you.

[miguelacaceresrios]

see on another device and close ur session btw

[babelllll]

Thanks for the suggestion! I've just tried but the ghost notification still persists.

[miguelacaceresrios]

charge ur phone lil bro

[miguelacaceresrios]

Go to Settings → Notifications

Click on your profile picture in the top-right corner and select Settings.

In the left sidebar, click on Notifications.

Click "Check" or "Sync" to force a synchronization

On the Notifications settings page, look for a button that says "Check" or "Sync" near the top. Clicking this will force GitHub to re-sync your notification count with the server, which should clear any ghost notifications.

[miguelacaceresrios]

or clean ur cookies and try on incognito

[babelllll]

Thanks.
I've solved this ghost notification problem through https://github.com/orgs/community/discussions/6874#discussioncomment-14533798

[babelllll]

For anyone else facing this, running the following JavaScript snippet in the browser's developer console on the notifications page immediately clears the ghost notification.

(function(){var f=document.querySelector('.js-notifications-mark-all-actions form[action="https://webproxy.poorya-velaei-d67.workers.dev/https://github.com/notifications/beta/mark"]');if(f){fetch(f.action,{method:f.method,body:new FormData(f),credentials:"include"}).then(r=>{if(r.ok)setTimeout(()=>location.reload(),500);});}})();

Just remember to type allow pasting in the console first to enable pasting the code.

[cachius]

@babelllll While this script clears the notifications, the offending repo is still subscribed to/watched. And thus still listed under repositories on the notifications page. Any idea how to unsubscribe from a deleted/private repo like gitcoini/gitcoincom?

[halilnevzat]

omg thank you so much, it removed the notifications but 2 spam repository is still there 😞 one is gitcoin and other is plasmanotify

[cachius]

@halilnevzat For reference, what exactly is the name of the plasmanotify repo?

[halilnevzat]

@halilnevzat For reference, what exactly is the name of the plasmanotify repo?

one is repo:gitcoin-mailnotification/gitcoin.com
and other one is repo:plasmanotify/plasma.to

[juliandreas]

Life saviour 🙏

[Ravi-GitLab-7]

Go to Settings → Notifications

Click on your profile picture in the top-right corner and select Settings.

In the left sidebar, click on Notifications.

Click "Check" or "Sync" to force a synchronization

On the Notifications settings page, look for a button that says "Check" or "Sync" near the top. Clicking this will force GitHub to re-sync your notification count with the server, which should clear any ghost notifications.

[01e9]

Also had ghost notifications from these (not existing) repos. The script solution worked.

Maybe it was some "spam attack"

[cachius]

For me it was gitcoini/gitcoincom that had the undeletable notification:

[cachius]

@github @look Could you have a look and tell the right people?

[halilnevzat]

same issue

[bankosegger]

Same issue here!

[jimdigriz]

Someone mentioned me in a private repo that I have no access to and I see this problem too.

It started a month or so ago and is now getting quite annoying as it tickles the notification/inbox dot so I permanently have unread messages I am unable to action on.

@babelllll has not provided a fix, this needs to be resolved at GitHub's end as it is leaking information about repos I cannot access into my notifications inbox.

[aimuz]

Please refer to this link to eliminate the annoying points.
https://github.com/orgs/community/discussions/111157

[Ash456rt]

Use this direct API call while logged in: https://api.github.com/notifications with a Personal Access Token to mark all as read.

[tuminoid]

I had the ghost notification from paradigm repos, and I found this gh api can actually remove the notification and the ghost repository from the notification view. Just replace the <owner>/<repo> with the offending repository.

gh api /notifications?all=true --paginate | jq -r '.[] | select(.repository.full_name == "<owner>/<repo>") | .id' | while read thread_id; do
  gh api -X DELETE "/notifications/threads/${thread_id}/subscription"
  gh api -X DELETE "/notifications/threads/${thread_id}"
done

[moraesc]

👋 I'm excited to share that we just shipped a major improvement to how notifications from spammy repositories and users are handled. They're now correctly hidden so you won't see inaccurate counts anymore. You can check out more details in our changelog (https://github.blog/changelog/2025-12-04-notifications-triggered-by-spam-accounts-are-now-correctly-hidden/). Let me know if you have any other questions or are still experiencing any issues!