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How to hide the disturbing "Challenges" counter or leave the event until hopefully possible?

Every day it shows this counter (i.e. (1)) unless I visit the challenges to mark it "read".

There's literally no time available to participate in such events, and a reminder of lack of time due to work, personal issues, or incomplete desires/wishes is not why I visit the forum.

I am sorry, but all such forced counters and notifications for events or "experiments" that suddenly appear here and there you MUST reset manually regularly just to keep focusing on your business mostly disturb, distract, and desaturate the overall presentation of the service.

Again, some developers MUST have their mind in control to keep it organized, yet these forced notifications that you MUST focus on just to keep being focused become not a positive experience enough to appreciate the existence of such events in the first place, I believe, where some may develop a "reflex" against anything similar possibly skipping important or interesting but now accidentally missed notifications.

More to that, it may eventually cause negative attitude for such and future even, when you expect the "forced" behavior.

I do get that these events should also allow for more monetization and advertising that supports the platform, and lack of attention means less income, but I would pay for absolutely no destruction on the platform instead, yet there's no such option even.

Have you considered a single descriptive notification with choices for optional reminders, similar to how Google approached the account privacy reminder?:

Google Privacy Reminder
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  • 2
    By "disturbing" did you mean "distracting"? Commented Sep 18, 2025 at 19:13
  • 1
    I am very sorry for my terrible mistake, dear @Gimby, and to not choose the most precise word possible you will find specifically appropriate this exact moment in life of you and me. I am also not sure why you believe that for more than a decade of participation I still have yet to check the for the totally valid term, and that you believe that I did not think multiple times choosing what word to put in this exact question even. It's sure not phpBB, if that was the main reason you chose to ridicule my participation or me on public? Related: english.meta.stackexchange.com/a/15383/275861 Commented Sep 19, 2025 at 10:34
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    Thanks for the feedback, I can see how this could be distracting, especially since we've been adding quite a lot of challenges. I'll discuss with the team and we'll see if we can do something. Commented Sep 19, 2025 at 17:09

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
10

This is largely based on my answer for removing the AI Assist menu item but instead it removes the counter from the "Challenges" menu item, while still leaving the item there.

Element blocker for uBlock Origin

(probably also applicable for other adblockers)

Add the following custom rule to uBlock Origin under "My Filters" to remove the menu item:

###nav-challenges .s-activity-indicator

Userstyle

Requires using an userstyle manager like Stylus:

Direct install

/* ==UserStyle==
@name         Hide challenges counter in the left menu
@description  Hides the counter for new challenges
@namespace    https://github.com/PurpleMagick/
@version      1
@author       VLAZ
@license      MIT
==/UserStyle== */

@-moz-document domain("stackoverflow.com") {
    #nav-challenges .s-activity-indicator { display: none !important; }
}

Userscript

If you prefer using just a userscript manager like Tampermonkey or Violentmonkey:

Direct install

// ==UserScript==
// @name            Hide challenges counter in the left menu
// @description     Hides the counter for new challenges
// @author          VLAZ
// @grant           GM_addStyle
// @grant           GM.addStyle
// @inject-into     page
// @match           https://stackoverflow.com/*
// @namespace       https://github.com/PurpleMagick/
// @run-at          document-end
// @version         1.0.0
// ==/UserScript==

(function() {
    const addStyle = typeof GM_addStyle !== "undefined"
        ? GM_addStyle
        : GM.addStyle.bind(GM);

    addStyle(`#nav-challenges .s-activity-indicator { display: none !important; }`);
})();

Workaround - hide the left menu

Technically the only on-site option to do something about the menu item is to hide it.

  1. Go to your profile preferences
  2. Switch off "Show left navigation".

Then the left menu will be collapsed. It can still be accessed from the top-left next to the site logo if really needed :

Hamburger menu at the left-most position in the top bar.

I turned off the left menu years ago and find it is very rare that I even need it. It seems to house mostly marketing-related stuff with a few links you do not necessarily need.

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