If you're receiving email notifications, you'll see notifications in your email client and be able to filter emails using the metadata.

Note: If you receive both web and email notifications, you can "share" the state of the notification by automatically marking web notifications as read once you've read the corresponding email notification. To enable this shared state, you must be able to view images from 'notifications@github.com'.

If you've enabled email notifications, you'll receive multipart emails that contain both HTML and plain text copies of the email content, including Markdown, @mentions, emojis, hash-links, and more. For more information on enabling email notifications, see "Choosing the delivery method for your notifications."

Tip: If you want to only see the email text, you can configure your client to select and display plain text copy only.

If you're using Gmail, you can click a button beside the notification email to visit the original issue or pull request that generated the notification.

Buttons in Gmail

The metadata of each email you receive is specific to the notification the email is addressing. To help you filter or forward notifications that GitHub sends, header information in every email is consistent. The header information you'll see is:

Header Information
From address This address will always be 'notifications@github.com'.
To field This field connects directly to the thread. If you reply to the email, you'll add a new comment to the conversation.
Cc address GitHub will Cc you if you're subscribed to a conversation. The second Cc email address matches the notification reason. The suffix for these notification reasons is @noreply.github.com. The possible notification reasons are:
  • assign: You were assigned to an issue or pull request.
  • author: You created an issue or pull request.
  • comment: You commented on an issue or pull request.
  • mention: You were mentioned on an issue or pull request.
  • push: Someone committed to a pull request you're subscribed to.
  • state_change: An issue or pull request you're subscribed to was either closed or opened.
  • team_mention: A team you belong to was mentioned on an issue or pull request.
  • your_activity: You opened, commented on, or closed an issue or pull request.
mailing list field This field identifies the name of the repository and its owner. The format of this address is always <repository name>.<repository owner>.github.com.

Further reading