Notifications not changing

[Elliria]

Steps to reproduce

1. I'm starting in the home screen on https://app.gitter.im/#/room/#gitter:matrix.org.
2. I click the notification bell, which has a red dot on it.
3. I see a bunch of notifications dating all the way back to September of 2021.
4. Note that I was a Gitter user and got switched over to Matrix yesterday. These notifications were there when I arrived.
5. Despite reading through the messages in the notifications, the notifications are still there.
6. I posted about this in matrix.org/gitter and got some help from @MadLittleMods
7. He suggested that I should go into Settings --> Notifications and click the red "Mark all as read" button.
8. I did that and the notifications are still there.
9. I went back in there to try it again and the red button is gone.

Outcome

What did you expect?

I expected the notifications to go away as I read the messages.

What happened instead?

They stayed there.

Operating system

Kubuntu 22.04 LTS Jammy Jellyfish

Browser information

Firefox 110.0 (64-bit)

URL for webapp

https://app.gitter.im/#/room/#gitter:matrix.org

Application version

Gitter version: 1.11.23-rc.1 Olm version: 3.2.12

Homeserver

gitter.im

Will you send logs?

Yes

[Elliria]

[Elliria]

[t3chguy]

I went back in there to try it again and the red button is gone.

The notifications panel is intentionally not cleared so you can scroll back to your old highlights as a means of searching

[Elliria]

So, how do you tell the difference between them and any new ones? Also, please consider making an optional toggle for those of us who would like to hide them unless they're needed for some reason.

[t3chguy]

@Elliria that isn't something the Matrix /notifications API supports. https://spec.matrix.org/v1.6/client-server-api/#get_matrixclientv3notifications

This API is used to paginate through the list of events that the user has been, or would have been notified about.

[Elliria]

I'm not using an API. I'm using the web interface for Matrix and the little bell icon just always gives me the same list of notifications that you see above even though new messages have come in. I don't understand its purpose and why it doesn't change. It's making it pretty much impossible to find new messages and the ones that I'm finding are out of sheer luck at this point.

[t3chguy]

@Elliria the issue you labelled notifications don't go away one read - this is intentional, the panel is not meant to lose history. If you're missing new notifications in the panel that is a very different issue. Could it be #6874 ?

[Elliria]

I don't think so. It's exactly as described above and I'd be surprised to find out this is intended behavior. I'm attaching a screenshot I took of how my notifications look today. Note that when you look at this image and compare it with the one I posted 5 days ago, they're identical. That can't be right...

[Elliria]

Note that I included the part of my (admittedly very hot pink) system tray that has the clock in it in the screenshot to show I took it today:

[Elliria]

Also, I have my browser set to clear cache and cookies every time it closes, so it's not a local issue.

[t3chguy]

@Elliria this list is entirely populated by the server so client cache has 0 effect on it. Are the missing notifications in encrypted rooms?

[Elliria]

No idea. These are the rooms I'm in, and I've had new messages in some or all of them since 5 days ago, so it stands to reason that there would have been notifications:

They're all public rooms. I also included System Alerts in the screenshot in case that's encrypted and/or counted as a room.

[t3chguy]

Sounds like your server, gitter.im, isn't correctly filling the Notifications panel for you

https://spec.matrix.org/v1.6/client-server-api/#get_matrixclientv3notifications

[Elliria]

Is there something I need to do to fix it or is the fix going to be at your end?

[Elliria]

Also, will this be worked on even if it's been closed as completed or would it need to be reopened?

[t3chguy]

@Elliria the issue is with your server, gitter.im. Not the client. The client just asks the server for a list of events and renders it verbatim. A closed issue will not be worked on but I suggest reporting this to gitter.im

[Elliria]

Okay, thank you. I found the email address for the gitter.im server's support department on the https://blog.gitter.im/2023/02/13/gitter-has-fully-migrated-to-matrix/ page and sent them a message linking to this issue.

[MadLittleMods]

While I understand this panel is populated with whatever /notifications returns, this feels like it may be an Element problem where it doesn't properly gather notifications once it's shown the empty state. I've created a new issue to track this problem separately: #24614

I also reproduced this (from the @EricGitterTester perspective). Some of these mentions were even made while staring at the blank panel.

And after a refresh, the mentions appeared and new mentions that happen also appear in the list.

[Elliria]

That's not the case for me. In my case, all the old mentions are there when I log in. A refresh empties my notifications panel and another refresh puts the old mentions back. No new mentions ever show up.

[Elliria]

This also shouldn't just be about mentions, should it? Shouldn't notifications also let me know about any new posts even if I'm not mentioned in them?

[MadLittleMods]

There appears to be multiple problems going on here and we're now tracking them in:

• Notification panel does not show my latest mentions #24616
• Notification panel is empty and stays empty even after new notifications come in #24614