Configuring notifications

Notification delivery options

You have three basic options for notification delivery:

• the notifications inbox on GitHub
• the notifications inbox on GitHub for mobile, which syncs with the inbox on GitHub
• an email client that uses a verified email address, which can also sync with the notifications inbox on GitHub and GitHub for mobile

To use the notifications inbox on GitHub and GitHub for mobile, you must enable web and mobile notifications in your notification settings. For more information, see "Choosing your notification settings."

Benefits of the notifications inbox

The notifications inbox on GitHub and GitHub for mobile includes triaging options designed specifically for your GitHub notifications flow, including options to:

• Triage multiple notifications at once.
• Mark completed notifications as Done and remove them from your inbox. To view all of your notifications marked as Done, use the is:done query.
• Save a notification to review later. Saved notifications are flagged in your inbox and kept indefinitely. To view all of your saved notifications, use the is:saved query.
• Unsubscribe and remove a notification from your inbox.
• Preview the issue, pull request, or team discussion where the notification originates on GitHub from within the notifications inbox.
• See one of the latest reasons you're receiving a notification from your inbox with a reasons label.
• Create custom filters to focus on different notifications when you want.
• Group notifications in your inbox by repository or date to get a quick overview with less context switching

In addition, the notifications inbox on GitHub for mobile allows you to triage notifications in dark mode and receive push notifications for direct mentions. For more information, see "Enabling push notifications with GitHub for mobile" or "GitHub for mobile."

Benefits of using an email client for notifications

One benefit of using an email client is that all of your notifications can be kept indefinitely depending on your email client's storage capacity. Your inbox notifications are only kept for 5 months unless you've marked them as Saved. Saved notifications are kept indefinitely. For more information about your inbox's retention policy, see "About notifications."

Sending notifications to your email client also allows you to customize your inbox according to your email client's settings, which can include custom or color-coded labels.

Email notifications also allow flexibility with the types of notifications you receive and allow you to choose different email addresses for updates. For example, you can send certain notifications for a repository to a verified personal email address. For more information, about your email customization options, see "Customizing your email notifications."

About participating and watching notifications

When you watch a repository, you're subscribing to updates for activity in that repository. Similarly, when you watch a specific team's discussions, you're subscribing to all conversation updates on that team's page. To see repositories that you're watching, see https://github.com/watching. For more information, see "Managing subscriptions and notifications on GitHub."

Anytime you comment in a conversation or when someone @mentions your username, you are participating in a conversation. By default, you are automatically subscribed to a conversation when you participate in it. You can unsubscribe from a conversation you've participated in manually by clicking Unsubscribe on the issue or pull request or through the Unsubscribe option in the notifications inbox.

For conversations you're watching or participating in, you can choose whether you want to receive notifications by email or through the notifications inbox on GitHub and GitHub for mobile.

For example:

• If you don't want notifications to be sent to your email, unselect email for participating and watching notifications.
• If you want to receive notifications by email when you've participated in a conversation, then you can select email under "Participating".

If you do not enable watching or participating notifications for web and mobile, then your notifications inbox will not have any updates.

Customizing your email notifications

After enabling email notifications, GitHub will send notifications to you as multipart emails that contain both HTML and plain text copies of the content. Email notification content includes any Markdown, @mentions, emojis, hash-links, and more, that appear in the original content on GitHub. If you only want to see the text in the email, you can configure your email client to display the plain text copy only.

If you're using Gmail, you can click a button beside the notification email to visit the original issue or pull request that generated the notification.

Choose a default email address where you want to send updates for conversations you're participating in or watching. You can also specify which activity on GitHub you want to receive updates for using your default email address. For example, choose whether you want updates to your default email from:

• Comments on issues and pull requests.
• Pull request reviews.
• Pull request pushes.
• Your own updates, such as when you open, comment on, or close an issue or pull request.

Depending on the organization that owns the repository, you can also send notifications to different email addresses for specific repositories. For example, you can send notifications for a specific public repository to a verified personal email address. Your organization may require the email address to be verified for a specific domain. For more information, see “Choosing where your organization’s email notifications are sent."

You'll only receive notification emails if you've chosen to receive email notifications in your notification settings.

If an organization you're a member of restricts email notifications to an approved email domain, you'll need to verify an email address in that domain to receive email notifications about activity in the organization. For more information, see "Restricting email notifications to an approved domain."

Filtering email notifications

Each email notification that GitHub sends contains header information. The header information in every email is consistent, so you can use it in your email client to filter or forward all GitHub notifications, or certain types of GitHub notifications.

If you believe you're receiving notifications that don't belong to you, examine the X-GitHub-Recipient and X-GitHub-Recipient-Address headers. These headers show who the intended recipient is. Depending on your email setup, you may receive notifications intended for another user.

Email notifications from GitHub contain the following header information:

Choosing your notification settings

1. In the upper-right corner of any page, click .
   
2. In the left sidebar, under the list of repositories, use the "Manage notifications" drop-down to click Notification settings.
   
3. On the notifications settings page, choose how you receive notifications when:
   • There are updates in repositories or team discussions you're watching or in a conversation you're participating in. For more information, see "About participating and watching notifications."
   • You gain access to a new repository or you've joined a new team. For more information, see "Automatic watching."
   • There are new GitHub Dependabot alerts in your repository. For more information, see "GitHub Dependabot alerts notification options."
   • There are workflow runs updates on repositories set up with GitHub Actions. For more information, see "GitHub Actions notification options."

Automatic watching

By default, anytime you gain access to a new repository, you will automatically begin watching that repository. Anytime you join a new team, you will automatically be subscribed to updates and receive notifications when that team is @mentioned. If you don't want to automatically be subscribed, you can unselect the automatic watching options.

If "Automatically watch repositories" is disabled, then you will not automatically watch your own repositories. You must navigate to your repository page and choose the watch option.

Choosing where your organization’s email notifications are sent

If you belong to an organization, you can choose the email account you want notifications for organization activity sent to. For example, if you belong to an organization for work, you may want your notifications sent to your work email address, rather than your personal address.

You'll only receive notification emails if you've chosen to receive email notifications in your notification settings.

If an organization you're a member of restricts email notifications to an approved email domain, you'll need to verify an email address in that domain to receive email notifications about activity in the organization. For more information, see "Restricting email notifications to an approved domain."

1. In the upper-right corner of any page, click .
   
2. In the left sidebar, under the list of repositories, use the "Manage notifications" drop-down to click Notification settings.
   
3. Under "Default notification email", select the email address you'd like notifications sent to.
   
4. Click Save.

Customizing email routes per organization

If you are a member of more than one organization, you can configure each one to send notifications to any of your verified email addresses. For more information, see "Verifying your email address."

1. In the upper-right corner of any page, click .
   
2. In the left sidebar, under the list of repositories, use the "Manage notifications" drop-down to click Notification settings.
   
3. Under "Custom routing," find your organization's name in the list.
   
4. Click Edit next to the email address you want to change.
   
5. Select one of your verified email addresses, then click Save.
   

GitHub Dependabot alerts notification options

You can choose the delivery method for notifications about GitHub Dependabot alerts on repositories that you are watching, as well as the frequency at which the notifications are sent to you.

By default, you will receive GitHub Dependabot alerts:

• by email, an email is sent every time a vulnerability is found (Email each time a vulnerability is found option)
• in the user interface, as warnings in your repository's file and code views (UI alerts option)
• on the command line, as warnings that are displayed as callbacks when you push to repositories with vulnerabilities (Command Line option)
• in your inbox, as web notifications (Web option)

You can customize the way you are notified about GitHub Dependabot alerts. For example, you can receive a weekly digest email summarizing alerts for up to 10 of your repositories using the Email a digest summary of vulnerabilities and Weekly security email digest options.

For more information about the notification delivery methods available to you, and advice on optimizing your notifications for GitHub Dependabot alerts, see "Configuring notifications for vulnerable dependencies."

GitHub Actions notification options

Choose how you want to receive workflow run updates for repositories that you are watching that are set up with GitHub Actions. You can also choose to only receive notifications for failed workflow runs.

Enabling push notifications with GitHub for mobile

When you install GitHub for mobile, you will automatically be opted into web notifications. You can then enable push notifications for direct mentions within the app.

You can only receive notifications for pushes to repositories on GitHub for mobile at this time.

Enabling push notifications with GitHub for iOS

1. Above "Home", tap your profile photo.
2. To view your settings, tap .
   
3. To update your notification settings, tap Push notifications.
4. To turn on push notifications for direct mentions, use the Direct Mentions toggle.

Enabling push notifications with GitHub for Android

1. Above "Home", tap your profile photo.
2. To view your settings, tap .
   
3. To turn on push notifications for direct mentions, use the Direct mentions toggle.