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Notes: mention notification link opens the post but the Notes panel is hidden behind the default editor sidebar #82102
Description
Description
When a user clicks a deep-link from a Note mention notification email, the correct post opens in the editor and the referenced note is deep-linked in the Notes panel — but the default editor sidebar (document/block settings) is active on page load, visually covering the Notes panel.
From the user's perspective the notification link "opens the post but not the note", because the Notes panel is not visible without manually switching sidebars. The behaviour is correct underneath — the note is focused — it's just obscured by the default sidebar state on entry.
Screen.Recording.2026-08-27.at.13.20.28.mov
Steps to reproduce
- User A mentions user B in a note on a post.
- User B opens the notification email and clicks the link.
- Editor opens on the correct post.
- Observe the sidebar: the default document/block settings sidebar is showing, not the Notes panel.
Expected
When the editor opens via a note-deep-link, the Notes panel is the active sidebar (or otherwise visible) so the referenced note is on-screen immediately.
Actual
The default sidebar covers the Notes panel. The user has to manually open the Notes panel to see the note they were sent to.
Reporter's own words
The link in the Note notification email opens the correct post in the editor, but it does not open the Notes sidebar or focus the specific Note referenced in the notification. I'd expect the link to take the recipient directly to the relevant Note.
Activity
[-]Notes: opening a deep-link from a mention notification opens the post but the Notes panel is hidden behind the default editor sidebar[/-][+]Notes: mention notification link opens the post but the Notes panel is hidden behind the default editor sidebar[/+]himanshupathak95 commentedon Aug 28, 2026
Thanks for filing this.
Small correction to the framing: it's not that the note is hidden behind the sidebar, I think it's more like the notification email doesn't reference the specific note at all. It just links via get_edit_post_link(), with no query param or client-side handling to identify or focus a note on load. So right now, clicking the link just opens the post with whatever sidebar tab was last open.
Simplest solution for this coming in my mind is to add the comment ID to the notification link as a query arg (?note=123).
Then we can read it once on mount, same pattern BrowserURL uses for ?revision= (useState(() => getQueryArg(...)))
Pass it into the existing focusNote() call in the Notes sidebar which already knows how to pick the right sidebar and spotlight the block, just isn't called on initial load.
Thoughts on this?
himanshupathak95 commentedon Aug 28, 2026
This is how it looks in my testing -
Screen.Recording.2026-08-28.at.09.1.mp4
Found a related edge case while testing the fix: the note-to-block link is only a local editor edit and it's not persisted until the post itself is saved, even though the note comment is saved immediately. So if someone adds a note, mentions someone, and doesn't save/publish the post afterward, the recipient's link will still land on the default sidebar, because there's no saved block to focus yet.
But if we manually open and check the notes sidebar panel, we will still be able to see the note but with the title "Original Block deleted." -
This isn't something to fix here itself (it would mean auto-saving the post whenever a note is added, which is a separate decision atlogether) Just mentioning here or maybe a seperate issue can be opened for this for discussion.
Mamaduka commentedon Oct 15, 2026
This is tracked here: #72717