The 14th-level ranger feat Sense the Unseen is a reaction whose trigger is "You fail a check to Seek." But Seek has the secret trait; you don't know whether you failed the check or whether there just wasn't anything around to find. So how do you know whether or not you can/should use this reaction?
Easy, the GM should be informed you have this ability, and that you're naturally willing to use it if you have a Reaction available. It's not like you'll be going around failing against mundane objects.
Just realized that you could lose an AoO or similar effect before you get your turn.
In the playtest, the party entered a room obviously empty of enemies.
Then I immediately had them roll initiative. The player with an ability similar to this knew exactly what had just happened. There was an invisible enemy lurking within. The other players had to use Sense Motive (via Perception) for initiative keying off that PCs expression. So some had to act while knowing their buddy went into combat mode, but not knowing why.
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When they want to take the action associated with the secret reaction, ask them if they want to use the secret reaction if it triggers before you roll. Might be a bit annoying to do for every seek check in the game, maybe they will just tell you to assume you use it unless they say otherwise, but I think that should work.
An alternative answer to the very fine answers already given: ignore that the book says some checks "should" be secret.
The book does explicitly say you can do that already.
I am not sure what the issue is.
"You don't see anything" then the player can choose to use their reaction if they wish.
Seek is one of those skills where it becomes quite obvious whether you failed or not based on gm response.
For said ranger with Sense the unseen, as player, I'd word my intention to seek accordingly: "I'm looking for some sneaky monsters in that area, note that I can sense undetected creatures if I fail the check."
Thus the GM knows, the feat works and the GM can describe it narratively "your eyes tell you there's no one there, but your other senses picked up on a creature hiding behind that pillar."
"You don't see a thing" could also be because there is no thing at all.
Then allow the player to choose to use the ability, if nothing is revealed the reaction isn't spent. If something is found to be hidden then the reaction goes off.
It is still super easy to determine imo.
That is saying, the reaction can only ever be used when there is a creature to use it on. So having the player call it out is a non issue as far as i am concerned.
For said ranger with Sense the unseen, as player, I'd word my intention to seek accordingly: "I'm looking for some sneaky monsters in that area, note that I can sense undetected creatures if I fail the check."
This right here has my vote for how to handle reactions triggered off of secret checks.
If the GM has all of the PC character's stats and feats memorized, they might be able to intuit what the player would want to do. But that is a bit of a burden to put on a GM.