Turn off GitHub email notifications on Mac: the full walkthrough

Updated August 2026 · 4 min read

If you're on macOS and your Mail.app is drowning in GitHub messages, you have three moves, in increasing order of commitment: filter in Mail, dial back the settings at GitHub, or replace email with something that lives on your desktop. This walkthrough covers all three.

Step 1 — Filter first (reversible, zero risk)

Open Mail → Settings → Rules → Add Rule:

If From contains [email protected]
Then: Move to mailbox → create a "GitHub" mailbox
Optionally add a second condition on the subject ([Repo] prefix) to split per-project mailboxes.

This keeps everything searchable but out of your face. Do this today while you decide how far to go.

Step 2 — Cut it off at the source

Mail rules hide the symptom; the settings page removes the cause.

Open github.com/settings/notifications.
Under Subscriptions (Watching), uncheck Email.
Under Participating and @mentions, decide: keep Web, drop Email.
Uncheck "Automatically watch repositories" so new projects don't re-add you to the flood.
Scroll to Security alert notifications and leave email ON — dependency CVEs should not live only in a web inbox.

Per-repo noise: open the repo → Watch dropdown → Participating and @mentions only.

Step 3 — Replace the useful part of the email

The honest reason people keep GitHub email is that a review request arriving in Mail is hard to miss. Take that away and you need a replacement that's at least as visible:

GitHub Mobile push notifications — good, but they buzz your phone during focus time.
A menu bar app — an unread badge on your Mac, click to see what's new. Visible without being interruptive.

DevNotify is exactly that: your GitHub notification count lives in the macOS menu bar, one click shows PRs, issues and mentions, click a row to open it. Free trial, $19 lifetime.

Download DevNotify for macOS Buy license — $19

Verify it worked

After changing settings, GitHub stops new email within a minute or two — anything already sent stays in your inbox. Check the next morning: your GitHub mailbox should be empty except for security alerts. If mail keeps arriving, you're still watching a repo that has email enabled at the repo level — the Watch dropdown on that repo overrides account defaults.