Email to GitHub notifications migration guide and tips

email_2_github_notifications.md

Here's a strategy and a bunch of tips and tricks for dealing with a full inbox of GitHub notifications, dealing with those that matter and getting rid of the rest, and keeping things clean, organized and easy to deal with for the future. This is based on my own experiance using both and moving from the former to the latter, but YMMV.

Step 0: Get rid of the low hanging fruit

• Mark all your unread GH emails as read, and maybe move them to a special folder/label just in case
• Mark all "read" GH notifications as done since you've presumably already seen them via email, using Select by -> Read at the top, then click the Done button
• Mark notifications on all closed/merged issues/PRs as done using the same Select by menu/Done button.
• Similarly, for any repos you know you don't care about, select them with the lower part of the left sidebar or repo:<name> in the search bar, then Select all and Done

Step 1: Triage what's most important

The idea here is to take advantage of GitHub's filtering and selection features to prioritize your time going through the types of notifications most likely to be relevant to/require you:

• Typing reason: in the search bar will show possible reasons you were notified to filter by, and only select the most important first. For example, notifications issues/PRs you're "Assigned" to, and direct mentions of you, are probably more likely to need your attention than mentions of a team you're in or issues/PRs you've commented on, which are in turn more likely than those from repos you've subscribed to.
• You can combine this with the repo: option to filter by specific repos that are most important, and the other filters as desired
• For each notification, if it can be addressed and dismissed quickly, do so and click Done. Otherwise, use the Save option to come back to it later.
• Once you work your way to either the oldest notifications (either those you've already seen via email, or older than e.g. 1 month), go to the next most important reason/etc., until you're done with reasons/repos you care about

Step 2: Deal with the rest

• Go back to the main inbox, Select all notifications, and click Done to get rid of the remaining old notifications
• If you want to move the saved notifications you've saved for later back to the inbox rather than just in the saved tab, I've found a workaround: enter is:saved is:open in the search bar, select all, click the ... button, mark as unread, then in your inbox select all (uncheck any actual new ones) and mark as read
• Go back through the remaining saved notifications at your leisure, unsaving and Done-ing them when you've finished with them, or processing them as in Step 3

Step 3: Welcome to the future!

For new incoming notifications, I find several tools helpful for triaging, categorize and process them (YMMV):

• I use Unread for notifications I haven't triaged, and for higher-urgency notifications I've triaged but can't immediately deal with.
• I use Done to indicate there's nothing actionable for me to do until/unless something happens (that would trigger another new notification)
• I use Save for issues/PRs I may want to come back to later, but there's no immediate action I need to do—either in the Inbox/not Done for those where there's a specific deferred action and timeframe ("I'll merge in a week if no one objects"), or Done/just in Saved otherwise
• Also, I really like the Group by repository option to keep my inbox more organized, vs. the default date view