GitHub notifications not showing? Here are the 7 real causes

Updated August 2026 · 6 min read

You expected a notification about that PR review, and nothing arrived. Before assuming GitHub is broken, work through this list — in our experience one of these seven things explains almost every "missing" GitHub notification.

1. You're not subscribed to the thread or repo

GitHub only notifies you about threads you're participating in, were @mentioned in, are reviewing, or explicitly watch. If a teammate opened an issue in a repo you don't watch, silence is correct behavior. Check with Watch at the top of the repo — set it to All Activity only if you really want everything.

2. Your watching list has muted repos

You may have muted a repo months ago and forgotten. Go to your Watching list (github.com/watching) and scan for muted repositories. Unwatch anything you no longer care about — an overloaded notification inbox trains you to ignore it.

3. Web notification settings are off for that category

Under Settings → Notifications, each delivery channel (Web, Email) can be toggled separately per event type (Participating, Watching, Mentions, CI). A common trap: email works but web/participating notifications are unchecked — so nothing appears in the bell icon.

4. You're looking at the wrong inbox

The GitHub bell shows unread; once you've seen the item it moves to the "Done" filter and disappears from the default view. Also check whether the inbox filter is set to a specific repository. Use the Inbox → Done toggle before concluding something was never sent.

5. The notification email went to spam or a filter

Notifications come from [email protected]. Corporate mail filters love to file them away. Search your mailbox for that sender across "All Mail"/archive, not just the inbox, and whitelist the address.

6. Fine-grained token scopes are too narrow (third-party apps)

If you use any tool that reads notifications through the API, its token needs the right access. For classic tokens that's the notifications scope (plus repo for private repositories). For fine-grained tokens, grant read access to metadata and notifications for the relevant repositories. A scope problem typically looks like: some repos show notifications, private ones don't.

7. You checked hours ago and GitHub throttled polling

API-based clients hit rate limits. The unauthenticated notification check is severely limited; even authenticated calls cap out at around 50 requests per hour per endpoint family for some tools. If your client polls aggressively, it may be silently failing part of the time.

Make them impossible to miss instead

All seven fixes above make sure GitHub sends notifications. The other half of the problem is making sure you see them without keeping a browser tab open all day. That's what we built DevNotify for: an unread count sitting in your macOS menu bar, one click to open the PR or issue, your token stays on your machine.