Hey all,
I’ve been using GitLab for a while, but I am still wondering what’s the difference between “Issues” and “Todos”, in the top bar of my GitLab dashboard.

According to the documentation, “Issues” is for those issues I’ve been assigneed to, and “Todos” is for tasks I’ve assigned to, plus tasks I’ve been mentioned on.
In that case, why is the amount of tasks in “Todos” (31) lower than the amount on “Issues” (49), if Issues is a subset of Todos?

Thanks in advance!

Please note that I’m just a regular user and my statements are based on observation from using GitLab for a few years.

So you’re right about the Issues being just a list of all issues assigned to you. Todos are a bit more complicated.

When an issue gets assigned to you, it will increment both counts but you can dismiss it from the Todos list even though the issue hasn’t been resolved. In a similar manner, when a merge request is assigned to you, it will increment both the Merge Requests and the Todos lists but you can also dismiss this on the Todos list even if the merge request hasn’t been closed or accepted yet. So it’s common to see this. Here’s a screenshot of mine:

When you get mentioned, the count for your Todos increases but once you respond, it gets removed from your to-do list.

Basically, I treat todos as just notifications.

There’s a few good comments on this issue regarding dismissing to-do items - hopefully that helps you understand how the to-do list works.