Question about "Safe Mode"

Hey general forums, just wanted to ask a specific question. Do you know if going into "safe mode" preserves the social aspects of chess.com even as it blocks you from them? I'm trying to figure out how I can play chess here without being distracted & still save all of the things I've done over the past couple years, including my followed threads (which don't save when I leave a club). Couldn't find a concrete answer, so here we go... 

If this works, I'll probably try it at some point

Mostly worried about whether I would lose all my "followed threads" haha, lots of good resources there.

Without knowing for sure, I wouldn't risk it. Sometimes you just have to set personal boundaries. If I'm in live chess, I just won't answer my messages. I'll answer them between games or between sessions. 

I used to answer many of them right away, but sometimes I just want to work on my own chess and these distractions can get in the way - not just the time to read and respond, but also just with messing up your flow state. 

chess.com also recently became much more lenient about multiple accounts as long as you get permission from chess.com staff/support to create it. I know some chess.com friends of mine simply created a second account to play chess without distractions like forum threads and messages, but the drawback to this is that with a different account, your ratings are of course different. I don't have any alt accounts (just this account for everything really and then my mod account for "work" things) because I like having everything in one place if I'm able to, but this is an option you may also consider.

I don't know about safe mode, but I know focus mode is a good way to remove distractions during live play, and you can turn it on and off during the game by pressing the 'z' key or (after you're in live chess) by going to settings -> play -> always use focus mode.

I have one such "alt account" currently which I created with staff permission say a year ago for blindfold play, but I've only played a couple of games on it so it's quite useless... I may just email staff and ask them to close that account and allow me to create another one which has all social features disabled, and I don't really care about those ratings being different in that case...

As a side topic, I have 3685 followed threads on the general forums and counting now... not including this one! Which is quite a bit even though I've spent a lot of time on the site.

And for personal boundaries, well, that works but I usually can multitask enough to comment on forums, talk on chats, and play games at the same time... so unless it's a serious game (which is almost never at this time) I still continue to get distracted here.

Yep, used it a few times before, I'm thinking more of using safe mode as an "off switch" for everything social here, instead of just when I'm in games so that I can set clear boundaries of when I'm participating in clubs & forums and when I'm not.

You can disable all notifications in settings

No, to my knowledge you cannot disable alerts for all clubs, chats, messages, etc in settings. That has to be done manually.

I am not 100% sure but based on the description of safe mode the messages should be saved and come back when you turn it back off.
"If you want to prevent your child from social interactions on Chess.com, or just want to have some peace and quiet yourself, you can enable safe mode and to disable all messages, chat, and comments. "

Should be like how you can close and reopen accounts

Should probably clarify that closing your own account doesn't delete messages... but when chess.com closes your account they disappear.

For example this person closed their account but their forum is still visible.

https://www.chess.com/forum/view/general/would-someone-explain-waht-my-fide-rating-would-be

Whoa! Well no wonder; I don't even know how you survived this long! I have a lot of threads I follow as well, but I also unfollow threads after a while. Many of the threads I post in are just helpful advice for other members, so a few weeks later when the thread dies down, I can just unfollow that thread. Otherwise, I'd have so many notifications daily from threads resurrected from years ago. 

Another big one for me was what club notifications I keep on. Few clubs do I keep all notifications on for; even still I get many messages/notifications daily, but at least I know those are the filtered ones of more importance. I want to be on chess.com for chess and maybe some forums or chatting, but I don't come here for forums and chatting with maybe chess. It comes down to what priorities the person holds and it varies slightly for each person; do whichever feels best for you

How do you see threads followed

https://www.chess.com/forum/my_tracked_topics General forum followed threads

I likely have far over 5000 followed including clubs.