Oh lordy, it's even worse than I thought, then...

Hi SpongeBob,

Well, this is a merry old dance, isn't it?!

This is my understanding of what you're telling us (and have been telling us since October)

1. You're using the Chrome browser on the desktop site.

1. When you've read a thread, it used to be the case that it would change colour (so you'd know that you'd read it).

1. This was a handy feature, and it pleased you mightily.

1. Since October, it seems that the colour change function has stopped working. Not every single time, but enough times to be annoying.

1. This means that you often end up reading the same thread again. Which is a waste of your time (especially if the thread was a dull one in the first place).

1. Our Tech team have suggested various reasons for this.

1. You (and many others) have quashed said reasons. And made it clear that NO, YOU'RE NOT USING PRIVATE BROWSING.

1. And also, NO, YOU'RE NOT SWITCHING BROWSERS.

1. And also, NO, YOU HAVEN'T DELETED YOUR BROWSING HISTORY.

10. And what's more, it's happening even when there are NO NEW (UNREAD) POSTS ON A THREAD.

11. It happens on both 'Threads I'm On' and 'Threads I'm Watching' lists.

12. It's happening on a multitude of browsers - Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Explorer, you name it...

13. It happens on the App IN ADDITION to the desktop site. And has done since early last year, despite updates, reinstalling the app, etc.

14. It's really, really, really annoying.

Does that about cover it, @SpongeBobJudgeyPants ?

If so, what can I say? Except sorry! And that I'll get this laminated and sent over to Tech right now.

Hey guys, thanks for raising the issue with the app, we'll look into it!

Hi,

You are quite right I forgot to include Explorer in my list of browsers, it is something that all browsers do.

This is because it is a feature of the browser and depends on your browser history and how the browser manages the history of pages you have visited. This is something controlled by the browser you are using at the time.

So for example you may look at a thread on safari then look at a link to that same thread on another browser and it won't show as visited, because you are using a different browser.

The browser searches it's history to determine whether a link is visited or not. Once the user deletes the browser history, or the browser history expires (which is different for each browser), a link will stop showing as visited. The browser history is stored slightly differently depending on which browser you are using.

Browsers keep track of all web pages you visit on the web, after some time the pages you have visited will expired from your browser history, and will no longer show as visited.

Hi There SpongeBob...

" it temporarily changes colour, to show I've read it, then will change back to 'unread colour' at some point "

I think that was in the original post? So it does change colour then changes back at some point?

If however it's not changing colour for you at all then that might be a setting on the browser you are using, which I think you said is chrome?

Sorry for the delay!

Visited links show depending on browser history. This varies depending on the browser you are using.

Chrome - has a default setting of 90 days, you can't change this.
Firefox - keeps by number of pages rather than days
Safari - you can change this in preferences under "remove history items"

So after a period of time/lots of browsing things will get removed from your browser history depending on which browser you are using.

We do definitely care, very sorry for the delay in getting this sorted.

We have moved it up to the top of our priority, so hopefully will have this fixed very soon.

Tracey

So sorry you are having problems with this. MNHQ Tech will take a look at this and see why this is happening.

Hi folks,

So we're trying to get to the bottom of this and the tech team think that this only happens in private browsing! Is this the case for you, OP? Are you using private browsing?

So sorry, SpongeBob - we've given the Tech team another nudge.

Hello, thanks for posting! We've chased Tech on this one, will post once we've got a bit more info from them about this.

Hello, sorry! Was checking this one with Tech and failed to post to say it's on our radar

Once we've heard from tech as to what's happening here we'll post again, thanks!