This will enable me to keep track of which ones I eventually go through and read over time.
Or is there an alternate way to keep track of which old posts you’ve read?
Thank you!
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This will depend on how your account is configured somewhat. Assuming the instance is using the defaults, then any old topic you read will start tracking the read state after 4 minutes. You can change that in your preferences so it happens sooner.
I set most instances I’m on to track as soon as I open the topic.
Now, topics created prior to your account’s creation date will not show up on the new or unread tabs until you’ve actually viewed and started tracking the topic.
You can always find them in the main Latest tab and the per-category Latest tab.
On some instances you may see an Unseen tab, and this does something to similar to Latest except that it is filtered to show any topic that has had a new message posted since your account was created even if it’s not on your tracking/watching lists.
Not all instances add to the menu, but if you’re using a regular browser you can manually access it via /unseen
For example, it’s not enabled here, but going to HTTPS://meta.discourse.org/unseen will show it 
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Can you please explain?
To reiterate: all I want to do is to mark all posts made before my account was created as unread.
Thank you
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Now, topics created prior to your account’s creation date will not show up on the new or unread tabs until you’ve actually viewed and started tracking the topic.
To reiterate: all I want to do is to mark all posts made before my account was created as unread.
Thank you
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Sorry, should have explained that part better. There isn’t a way to do that unless you actually view them so your account starts tracking them.
That said, they do highlight slightly differently in the Latest tabs. They’ll show the same formatting as the New/Unread topics, but won’t have the new/unread indicator on them.
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So, the only way to mark all the all posts made before my account was created as unread would be to manually click on every single one of them, and then scroll to the bottom and click “defer”?
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Hi Buzz1!
I’m supposed to know fairly well how Discourse’s interface works 
, but I can’t see what you refers to. Where is the “defer” button? 
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If you want to show them on the Unread tab, yes.
There’s a checkbox in the interface preferences that enables it. When you enable if there’s an option at the bottom of a thread with the other topic controls that you can click. It marks the topic as having the last post as Unread.
I use it quite often on the NaNoWriMo forums.
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Ok, so it seems that the only two ways that I can come up with to accurately track which posts I have read would be:
- To create a macro that goes through and manually clicks “defer” on every post. Then, after I have read them they will automatically no longer be marked as “unread”.
- Scrape all old posts into a spreadsheet and mark them as read after reading.
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Here, let me show you show you something:
See those topics with faded text? Those are topics I’ve read every post in.
See the pinned topic has a black title but no unread count and no new dot either? That’s because I’ve never read that topic while logged in and it very much predates my account creation date.
So you don’t need to do anything to tell which topics that predate your account you haven’t read. They’ll become the faded version when you’ve read all the posts in them same as any other topic would.
Internally, until there is an entry in the database saying you’ve seen the last post in a thread, it will always be in the unseen state even if it predates your account creation, it just won’t be marked as Unread until there is an entry that says you have read the topic but there are still posts in it you haven’t read.
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That’s brilliant!
I feel bad that I hadn’t noticed that yet.
Thank you so much, Claudia. That solves my problem completely. You’ve saved me a lot of work and made my life easier.
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