Hide topics without new messages

Is there a button I miss that, when selected, only shows unread topics in my sub-category?

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To my knowledge there is no button like this, although unread topics are easy to identify. Requesting for such would require specification, if you want to hide all topics except those, which

  • you did nor read so far at all.
  • you read in part so far but with some new post added after your last visit.

Unread are, indeed, bold (not that bold by the way), but when far down, you must scroll first to see. One could add a button “mark all topics read” when you leave your community, or the ability to install that behaviour for you as defalt.

Adding such a button still requires specifications, which topics you would like to see next time you visit - all topics

  1. you did nor read so far at all?
  2. you read in part so far but with some new post added after your last visit?

Discourse offers another way to select unread/new topics by your notification settings. Setting your notifications like this:

Screenshot_211217

will result in showing you all the topics in all categories (except those you manually set to “muted”) as “New” which have been created since your last visit (see 1.). After having read those you are interested in you can skip all the rest by clicking the button “Dismiss new” at the bottom of the list and thats it. They will not be shown as “New” to you at your next visit.

Those you have read for at least 4 minutes or manually set to “watching” or “tracking” will be shown to you as “Unread” if a new post had been added since your last visit (see 2.). After having read those you are interested in you can manually set those you are no longer interested in to “normal” or “muted” by using the button at the bottom of each topic. If you want to get rid of all those topics, you can click the button “Dismiss” at the bottom of the list.

That is how I handle it and it works quite well. You still can see the total list of topics in a (sub)category by going to the category page and open the one you like. There you will see the unread ones in black letters and the read ones in grey letters.

What would also help would be to explain what buttons a user has to press in what order to see the screen you have included a screen-shot from. Discourse’s documentation is piss-poor**, so users have no way of knowing how to get to any set of options.

** Via this thread I’m aware of this documentation - but other than that post about it there appears to be no link to it from this forum.

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Sorry, but notification settings is different than hiding read messages or threads I guess.

Is the reason the “unread” view doesn’t meet your needs that it only shows topics that you’re tracking/watching, and you don’t want to set the entire category to tracking/watching? Or something else?

It may sound a bit strange (as other issues with Discourse do) but by these settings you can adjust the display of new and unread messages on your startpage when visiting the forum. It is another approach but it works.

From this picture:

Can you explain which magic button to click; “Latest” does not give any difference for me at least.

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Magic buttons are quite rare these days :wink: … at least there is none on the “Latest” display of Discourse. Nevertheless the display tells you that there are neither “New” nor “Unread” topics waiting for you to read.

Here is a sample for what I tried to explain. As I am interested in several categories, I have chosen “Categories” for my startpage which gives me a good overview (You can set this in your preferences → Interface → Default Home Page).

When I start a new visit it looks like this:

.
There are 23 new topics an 4 I have read before but with new posts. For every category I am interested in I can see the number of new and unread topics.

Here are the 23 new:
.

(cut off due to the length).

After having read those I am interested in, I click the button “Dismiss New” at the bottom of the list and that’s it. The header “New” will disappear, nothing new to read.
.

Again the 4 unread:

After having read those, the blue markers dissapear as well as the “Unread” header.

Going back to my startpage now there are no “New” and no “Unread”:
.

This is the result you have been looking for after pressing the magic button, or not?

Nevertheless I still have the option to click “Latest” (either for one selected category as shown below or for all of my categories as well):

and there I can still find those topics I have dismissed before (which are those shown in black letters) so there is still some stuff to read if I feel bored. (This is the display option shown in your post.)

With these options you can select any stuff here in a much more comfortable and comprehensive way than in the old forum imho. You just have to make the necessary settings in your preferences once and that’s it.

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Sorry, my fault … :flushed: … I believed that every user being registered here since months will know where to find the preference settings.

Agreed. That is why we have started to create our own documentation for the german community. It is not yet complete and it is in german language but we are still improving.

Besides that there is some guideline in english available here.

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Last try: I was asking for a button/setting/whatever, that hides topics in my start page community (Netherlands) that don’t bear new messages since my previous visits in order for topics that do have new messages, in my community, float to the top to prevent me the need to scroll down to observe bold typed topics and possibly a “make all topics read” in my community when I leave the page.

As far as I know, there is no functionality to show all threads with unread posts for your category.
However, there is functionality to show all tracked threads with unread posts for your category.

This is why you’re getting explanations on how to make it so that threads are automatically tracked under certain conditions. I believe a simpler alternative could be to just use the bell icon on the category to track the entire category.

As long as all the threads you care about are tracked, there’s a pair of buttons (new + unread) that almost gives you what you want. In your screenshot, these would appear next to “Latest” if they didn’t currently have 0 entries.

So what we had in the “old” forum:
image
seems impossible in this flashy one.
We call this progress.

“Subscribe to this forum” is roughly equivalent to tracking a category, “Mark this forum as read” corresponds to the “Ignore …” button in the “Unread” view, and you can bookmark that view to use it as your starting point.

It’s not “progress”, but it’s not worse either. Just different. After actually using these for a bit, I’m satisfied with my ability to follow what’s going on. I hope it will be similar for you.

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I am sorry I couldn’t be of any help to you. I was a bit mislead as in your OP you wrote about “unread topics” which are treated by Discourse as “New” which means “not read by you so far at all”. That is why I have been asking repeatedly if your focus are those topics you did not read at all or those you read earlier but with new posts after your last visit.

Nevertheless the settings I described are the tools Discourse offers you for the selection of the topics you are looking for. Whenever visiting your subcat “Nederland” you will be provided automatically with 3 topic lists which are

  • Latest = a chronological list of all topics in your subcat notwithstanding if you have read them or not
  • New = all topics created since your last visit (or out of any other period according to your setting)
  • Unread= all topics read earlier but with new posts

So after checking out the “New” and “Unread” you can dismiss those you do not want to read and that’s it. Next time you visit the same procedure starts again. Those you are looking for are the “New” and “Unread” - I am sorry these are split in 2 lists but that is how Discourse does it.

If no “New” or “Unread” button to open the respective list is shown in the headline (left of the button “Latest”) there are no new or unread topics waiting for you. It is as simple as that.

Last hint: The filter for “Unread” topics again depends on your preference settings. To be sure that every topic with new posts will be filtered into this list the most simply way is to set the whole subcategory to “tracking” (or even “watching”) as described by @Tordanik in post #13.

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