Discourse - Mark as Unread

[mike]

Discourse has the ability to mark threads as unread. The feature is known as ‘Defer’. But, it is turned off by default.

Enable Defer

1. Visit your interface preferences.

2. Scroll down, and check the box for ‘Enable defer to mark topics unread’.

   

3. Click the Save Changes button at the bottom of the page.

Use Defer

1. Visit the topic you want to mark as unread.

2. Scroll to the bottom of the topic. An easy way is to click on the bottom of the Discourse timeline for the topic.

   

3. Click on the Defer button.

   

Now the topic will be bolded in the topics list, saved in your unread inbox, and show in your notifications menu.

You can access your notifications menu by clicking on your avatar at the top right of any page. Notifications are shown by default. Or, click on the bell icon.

References

• Ability to mark any post as unread | Discourse Meta
• Defer Feature Announcement | Discourse Meta
• Names of user interface elements | Discourse Meta
• Notifications Feed | Mojeek Discourse

[Josh]

Useful as always @mike, I for one will be using this going forward

[mike]

The only thing I’ve noticed is that defer bases the notification on the last status update from the thread. So, if the last thing that happened was a like then that is what shows in your notifications.

I expected the notification to be based on the last reply.

So, sometimes, you have to look for (or ignore) a random notification if you want to keep the thread highlighted in your notifications.

On one thread I was experimenting with, Discourse picked a random moderator edit. So my notifications had the moderator’s name with a pencil icon. And clicking on the notification brought me to a random edit (not the last one). This was confusing. In a case like that, you might opt to bookmark the thread (with a note) if you needed something more than a reminder.