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I have the new inbox items email notification set to daily:

daily email notification for inbox items

I check the inbox (i.e. click the inbox icon on top bar) very frequently, many times every day, and after I check the items, I mark them as "unread" again right away, so I was expecting to get email every day for the unread items.

However, that's not the case:

screenshot of emails showing the frequency of them

As you can see, it's anywhere between a day and even 5-6 days, in what appears to be random frequency.

Can anyone tell what exactly triggers this email?

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  • 1
    I sometimes get em, and I pretty much check daily. Commented Oct 21, 2024 at 7:21
  • Obvious question: perhaps they are based purely on the notification's created date? (Though, I'd assume you get notifications every day...) Commented Oct 21, 2024 at 10:17
  • @MetaAndrewT. every day indeed. Commented Oct 21, 2024 at 11:04

1 Answer 1

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This is just my guess - based on past observations. (Let us hope we'll get an answer from official sources.)

As far as I can tell:

  • If you mark some items in your inbox as read, they are no longer eligible to be included in an email. (Even if you then mark it as unread again.)
  • From the past emails it seems that the notification emails are posted every whole hour.
  • At that time, if you have some reply older than the given interval, the email is sent including all those replies. (Your screenshot shows that your setting is 24 hours.)

Let us use this answer as an illustration (and perhaps as a test) - assuming the above observations are correct:

  • Let us assume that you have checked your inbox recently.
  • The answer was posted 2024-10-21 12:47Z.
  • If you go to your global inbox during the next 24 hours and mark this reply as read - this answer won't be included in the next notification email.
  • If you don't do that until approximately 2024-10-22 13:00Z - a new email should be generated at that time. (And you should receive an email which contains all replies until then.)

Naturally, it works the same if there are already some other replies waiting for an email - the only difference is that the 24 hours should not be counted from this answer; but instead from the oldest of those replies.

I am not sure what happens if the post (the comment, the chat message) that generated the reply is deleted.

You can see some discussion related to this (and also some experiments) in this chat conversation.

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