Steam flashing like I have notifications but there's nothing new? (Also how to tame DIscord notifcations so I can re-enable them?)

[PianoPlayer88Key]

Hi ...

 

So I'm having an issue with Steam ... in that when I come back from having been AFK for several hours (often overnight), my open/minimized Steam tabs on the Windows taskbar will be highlighted, like I got some notification while I was away.  (This includes the Friends window, not just chat windows I may have left open.)

However when I open the windows, I've received no new messages.  In the notifications settings, the only one that's enabled is a notification when I receive a direct chat message; also it's set to never flash window when I receive one.

(I don't have a screenshot of the icons flashing on taskbar cause 1 - I'm super annoyed when they're flashing but there's nothing there - and it's not just 1 icon flashing, it's usually almost all of them, and 2 - it usually only happens once a day or other day, after I've been away several hours, usually overnight as I mentioned earlier.)

 

Is there anything I can do to fix that, so that the window doesn't flash unless it has a very good reason to?  (A software update wouldn't be a good reason to flash, unless it's a super critical one that if not addressed immediately would at best cause a BSOD, or at worse kill my physical hardware.)

 

 

 

 

Also ... Discord .... I have to turn notifications completely OFF on that, because I get absolutely DELUGESPAMMED with notifs if I don't.  

Like... EVERY time someone posts a message in EVERY chat channel, in EVERY server, it flashes a notification, especially on my phone.  Some of you have seen how active the LTT discord can be ... well okay I'll admit that's one of the more active Discords I'm in, but when you factor in being in several hundred Discord servers, it adds up super quickly. 

Even just one DIscord account is open with its ~ 100 servers (like on my phone cause it AFAIK doesn't support multiple Discord instances or VMs), I still get flooded if I don't completely disable the notifications.  (I'm in somewhere I think north of 400 Discord servers, so I have to use 5 accounts cause there's a 100-server limit per account.  I couldn't figure out how to run multiple DIscord instances in Windows, and I didn't want to use browser windows / private / incognito mode, so I had to resort to using VMs on PC.)

 

 

I'd like to set up my notifications so that I only get a notification if someone DM's me or @ mentions *ME* specifically (not "here" or "everyone") or replies to / quotes something I said, for the most part.  Also I wouldn't mind maybe seeing some kind of sub-notifications if a server owner or streamer (most of the Discord servers I'm on are run by Twitch streamers) either A - says that they're going live, or, when conventions start up and if it's one I'm attending, B - is saying where a meetup is, or things like that.  (By "sub-notifications" I mean it doesn't necessarily flash across my screen when I open the app, but there's a place I can go to see where they've accumulated.  Also if I get too many direct mentions / messages, I might want to relegate those to sub-notification status as well.)

 

I'd also like to tame those notifications globally by tweaking a couple settings, -- not have to do a bunch of things on each server, also preferably not per account or per device if possible.

How can I set that up?

 

(Leaving servers is not an option I'm willing to consider.

As a side note, for anyone who has an i9-9900K or i9-9900 or maybe i9-9900T ... what's its performance / clockspeed like on all cores, compared to a 4c/8t CPU, if you hard-limit it to about 100-110 watts power consumption?
Replacing the motherboard in my laptop, while technically possible with this Clevo, is not a practical option, so I'd have to do the Coffee Lake on Skylake trickery if I was going to upgrade my CPU; also I'm not planning on buying another desktop replacement laptop until probably DDR6 or DDR7 at the earliest.  I might want a multi-tasking threadripping beast of a GPD Pocket clone sometime (minimum support for 12-20+ VMs with 2 threads, each thread doing 160-200 points in Cinebench R15 or 400-500 in R20, or good enough to smoothly play 1080p 60fps video without dropping frames while other things are running, & 4GB RAM each), but that's for another topic, hoping to get one before the next convention I attend, I'm guessing around September 2022 or so.  My actual desktop, on DDR3 / 4790K, is planned for a rebuild with DDR5.)
 

[minibois]

7 minutes ago, PianoPlayer88Key said:

I'd like to set up my notifications so that I only get a notification if someone DM's me or @ mentions *ME* specifically (not "here" or "everyone") or replies to / quotes something I said, for the most part.

I don't know of a way to do this globally, but you should:

1. Open a server

2. Click on the name in the top left

3. Notification Settings

4. "Only @mentions" & "surpress @everyone and @here" and optionally "surpress all role @mentions"

5. rinse and repeat from step 1 for every server you're in (again, I don't know if you can set this on a global level)

10 minutes ago, PianoPlayer88Key said:

So I'm having an issue with Steam ... in that when I come back from having been AFK for several hours (often overnight), my open/minimized Steam tabs on the Windows taskbar will be highlighted, like I got some notification while I was away.  (This includes the Friends window, not just chat windows I may have left open.)

Maybe it just did an update while you were away?

[PianoPlayer88Key]

4 minutes ago, minibois said:

I don't know of a way to do this globally, but you should:

1. Open a server

2. Click on the name in the top left

3. Notification Settings

4. "Only @mentions" & "surpress @everyone and @here" and optionally "surpress all role @mentions"

5. rinse and repeat from step 1 for every server you're in (again, I don't know if you can set this on a global level)

yeah.... but I'd have to do that several hundred times, and I'm not about to do it that many times.  I'm okay with doing it once per account, OR once per device (and on my PC I kind-of hope that the multiple VMs with a separate Discord account running in each could be lumped together with my main Windows host OS with its Discord account as "one device" but I don't have super high hopes there), but on each individual server is a non-starter.

 

4 minutes ago, minibois said:

Maybe it just did an update while you were away?

Hmm idk ... cause I don't have the popup saying Steam downloaded an update, wants to restart, here's the changelog...  (Also I'm hoping when I upgrade my desktop PC next year, I can run an OS & software that can do rolling / on-the-fly updates without having to close things & restart - it's a huge hassle to have to re-open things I'm working on and set it up the way I'd had it / want it.)

[PianoPlayer88Key]

Okay, I came back to my PC again after being AFK for several hours, and Steam was flashing again.  This time, I got a screenshot before I opened & re-minimized the windows (would prefer to not have to do that, and I wasn't ready to close the chat windows yet):

 

 

Also when I checked the received messages, the most recent ones from the 2 open chats are both March 24.

 

When I opened up the Friends window, it was positioned & sized like this.

 

 

(I normally have it over toward the right side talking almost the entire height of the screen, although I haven't set it that way in probably a few weeks or so; I'll have to do that and see if it moves around next time this flashing-at-me-with-no-notifications issue comes up.  If so, that might mean something tried to go full screen at lower resolution, but I wouldn't know what.  The games I play are set to run windowed mode, and are not exactly the newest either - the one with more playtime came out in 1999.)

 

 

I wonder what could be making it flash like that?  I don't know how game updates would be causing that, and I thought I turned off most other notifications except for when I receive direct chat messages....

 

Also I just noticed that the Steam window (which happens to be open to the Fortress Forever game page in my library) was not flashing, just the 3 friends windows / chats, so I think it may have something to do with that.

[PianoPlayer88Key]

Another update with s couple more screenshots...

 

This time when I came to my PC this morning, only the Friends window was flashing, but two chat windows had popped up.  (They were already open, just minimized on the taskbar.)

 

 

Interesting thing, I noticed there was a message in the chat window on the left that I don't remember seeing the previous time, which was timestamped several hours before the screenshot in the last video was taken.

 

Also this time, the Friends list window did not get resized & moved to the upper left quadrant of the screen, it stayed where I moved it to the other day.

 

 

 

HOWEVER ... Even though it looks like I DID receive a chat message (and missed it the other day), I still think the taskbar / window should not be flashing -- because, as you see in my OP, "FLASH WINDOW WHEN I RECEIVE A CHAT MESSAGE" is set to "Never".  What gives?