Octobox helps you triage notifications efficiently so you can spend less time managing and more time getting things done.
If you manage more than one active project on GitHub, you probably find GitHub Notifications pretty lacking. Notifications are marked as read and disappear from the list as soon as you load the page or view the email of the notification. This makes it very hard to keep on top of which notifications you still need to follow up on. Most open source maintainers (and some GitHub staff) end up using a complex combination of filters and labels in their mail client to manage their notifications from their inbox. If, like us, you try to avoid email, then Octobox is for you.
This instance of Octobox is hosted by the Octobox.io team. To access Octobox.io you just need to sign in with your GitHub profile or install the GitHub app on the homepage.
This will give you access to basic notification information for public and private repositories using GitHub's notification scope. To access more detailed information you need to install the Octobox.io GitHub App.
To access more detailed information about your notifications (assignees, labels, conversations threads etc) Octobox.io needs more privileged access to your repositories. To enable this you need to install our GitHub App for your personal or organisation's account. Access to public repositories on Octobox.io is free forever, access to private repositories is a paid-for service.
There are two ways to pay for private repo access on Octobox.io:
This may seem a little strange, but bear with us: As a social experiment in open source sustainability we are asking you to make a choice between supporting the community of maintainers and contributors, or supporting the commercial entity that operates Octobox.io. The service you'll receive will be exactly the same regardless of the way you pay. You can read more about why we think this is important over on our blog.
Alternatively you can host your own instance of Octobox. See the installation guide for instructions and details regarding deployment to Heroku, Docker, and more.
Octobox helps you triage notifications from GitHub. If you use GitHub's own notifications dashboard you'll be familiar with some of the interface, actions etc. but there are some important differences:
Octobox extends GitHub's notification model by providing an additional 'archived' status, much like Gmail's email client. Archived notifications will not appear in your inbox again unless the thread, issue or PR receives a new notification. Archiving a notification does not result in any action on GitHub.
Octobox also adds a starred status to help you highlight important notifications with a star so you can come back and find them easily. Starred notifications are not social, they are more like bookmarks that GitHub stars. Starring a notification does not result in any action on GitHub.
Muting a notification will mark the notification as read, move it to the archive and ignore all further notifications from this thread, issue or PR. Muting also sets the thread to ignore:true ignoring further notifications on GitHub too.
By default Octobox will synchronise every time you hit the synchronise button. You can set automatic refresh interval on the settings page.
Octobox features a full set of keyboard shortcuts inspired by Gmail:
|
. or r
|
Refresh |
|
j
|
Move down the list |
|
k
|
Move up the list |
|
s
|
Star current notification |
|
x
|
Mark current notification |
|
a
|
Select/deselect all |
|
y or e
|
Archive current/marked notification(s) |
|
m
|
Mute current/marked notification(s) |
|
d
|
Mark current/marked notification(s) as read here and on GitHub |
|
#
|
Delete current/marked notification(s) |
|
o or Enter
|
Open current notification in a new window |
|
?
|
Show this help menu |
|
esc
|
Close modal, thread OR clear filters |
The sidebar contains most of the things you'll need to navigate between views in Octobox:
| Archived | Notifications that you've archived won't appear in your inbox again until Octobox receives another notification regarding that thread, issue or PR. |
| Starred | Notifications that you've starred are gathered together so you can come back and find them easily. |
| Read/unread | Notifications that have yet to be read or have been read, respectively. Nothing new here. |
| Type | Notifications by type (commit, issue, pull request, release, etc) |
| Reason | Notifications by the reason you've received it (assigned, authored, commented, mentioned, review requested, state changed or subscribed). |
| Org/repo | Notifications from a particular organisation and/or repo. |
| State | The state of the underlying issue or PR. i.e. open, closed, merged, |
| Assignee | Notifications assigned to you. |
| Status | The current CI status of the underlying PR. i.e. Success, Failing, Pending |
| Bots | Notifications created by bots. |
| Unlabelled | Notifications that have not been labeled. |
| Visibility | Notifications from public or private repositories. |
Octobox's search bar supports the following filter prefixes. Combine them together and with free text searches, for example: "github enterprise type:issue owner:octobox reason:assign":
Many prefixes accept multiple arguments when separated by commas or passed twice, for example:
"type:issue,release owner:octobox owner:24pullrequests".
Some prefixes also can be negated to exclude certain types of results, for example:
"-repo:splitrb/split -type:commit -owner:octobox -reason:mention".
repo:octobox/octobox
|
Only search notifications from the octobox/octobox repository. |
owner:microsoft
|
Only search notifications from repos in the microsoft organisation. |
type:pull_request
|
Only search pull requests. Also accepts:
issue,
release,
commit,
repository_invitation
and repository_vulnerability_alert.
|
number:123
|
Filter by notifications from issues and/or pull requests with the number '123'. |
reason:mention
|
Filter by reason the notification was triggered. Also accepts:
comment,
author,
state_change,
assign,
subscribed,
team_mention,
security_alert.
|
starred:true
|
Search notifications that you've starred. Also accepts false for the inverse. |
archived:true
|
Search notifications that you've archived. Also accepts false for the inverse. |
inbox:true
|
Search notifications in your inbox. Also accepts false for the inverse. |
unread:true
|
Search unread notifications. Also accepts false for the inverse. |
muted:true
|
Search muted notifications. Also accepts false for the inverse. |
sort:updated
|
Sort notifications by updated, read or subject. |
order:asc
|
Sort notifications in ascending (asc) or descending (desc) order. Use with sort. |
state:open
|
Filter by notifications from issues or pull requests that are open.
Also accepts closed and merged.
|
label:bug
|
Filter by notifications from issues or pull requests with the label of 'bug'. |
author:andrew
|
Filter by notifications from issue or pull requests that were created by 'andrew'. |
status:success
|
Filter by notifications from pull requests where checks status is 'success'.
Also accepts failure, pending and error.
|
unlabelled:true
|
Search notifications that don't have any labels. |
bot:true
|
Search notifications generated by GitHub apps or bot users (name ends in '-bot'). |
private:true
|
Search notifications from private repositories. Also accepts false for the inverse. |
assignee:andrew
|
Filter by notifications from issue or pull requests that are assigned to 'andrew'. |
locked:true
|
Search for lock conversations. Also accepts false for the inverse. |
draft:true
|
Search for only draft pull requests. Also accepts false for the inverse. |
Access to the Octobox API requires a key which you can generate and regenerate from the settings page.
Octobox.io is a small community of people supporting the service. We do not offer formal support processes. If you require formal support arrangements please email us otherwise you can try: