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    We spent some time on this in the dev process, and have it working for left-click, ctrl-left-click (open in new tab), and middle-click (open in a new tab). The challenge with "right click - open in new tab" is that there is no way to only catch it for "open in new tab" but not for the other right click menu options. So it is all-or-none with right click, and we chose not to mark as read then, because there are other legitimate uses of right click that dont include opening a new tab, and there are 2 other new tab options available (ctrl-left and middle).
    – Yaakov Ellis StaffMod
    Commented Dec 1, 2022 at 7:00
  • @YaakovEllis Middle click is not easily available via touchpad and having to use use the keyboard just to open a notification in a new tab is annoying. Can there a setting to enable right click to mark as read? Or an mechanism via the api to mark a specific inbox item as read? Then we could simply build our own inbox which would work as we need it to work.
    – samcarter_is_at_topanswers.xyz
    Commented Dec 1, 2022 at 9:10
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    Seems trivial to do if a parameter is attached to the URL. The same way clicks from the side bar are tracked by adding lq=1 (for linked) or rq=1 (for related). In a similar fashion, links from inbox messages parameter can indicate "mark a message as read after requesting this URL". Then it would not matter which mode of opening the page is used.
    – VLAZ
    Commented Dec 1, 2022 at 13:52
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    @VLAZ This would be awesome! And would also work from self-build inboxes!
    – samcarter_is_at_topanswers.xyz
    Commented Dec 1, 2022 at 13:54
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    Wouldn't it be far more useful to mark notifications as read at the visiting page without extra parameters? Why should i have to click on a notification in the inbox to cause it to be read when I load the page it's pointing at outside of the inbox? 99% of the time notifications i get are for things on pages I'm already on.
    – Kevin B
    Commented Dec 1, 2022 at 15:45
  • 3
    Came here to report exactly this. Drives. Me. Nuts. Right-Click > Open in new tab is my usual flow for dealing with notifications.
    – T.J. Crowder
    Commented Dec 3, 2022 at 14:28
  • 1
    @KevinB perhaps. It's a possible way to do it. However, then you might miss that something happened on the page if you didn't see the notification but just navigated there for another reason. Especially on long Q&As on Meta, it's very easy to miss if a comment or even a new answer was posted. I'd rather not clear out all the notifications for, say, 7 comments on 3 different posts and two new posted answers just because I went to check something in the question.
    – VLAZ
    Commented Dec 5, 2022 at 13:00