Q:

Saying thanks without making it sounds like "you are doing me a favor"?

I'm a 23 year old woman, working as a junior Q&A.
Some time ago I asked the dev team (mostly men, all older than me) for something that I needed to do my job. They weren't really happy with my request and made sure to let me know. They also didn't seem in a hurry to make the change until I told them that it really needed to be done (and the boss supported me).
One of the devs just informed me (using online communication) that it will finally be ready tonight. I want to acknowledge the fact that I have received the message--and maybe even thank them--but I don't want to sound like they are doing me a favor. How can I express that?
For now, I have just ignored the message and posted something unrelated in the communication channel we use (Slack). 
Edit: Please consider that I'm really bad at interpersonal skills when answering my question. So be as precise as possible.

A:

Just thank them in a low-key, professional way.  Being overly effusive about it might give the impression that you feel they have done you a big favor, so instead of something like "Thank you so much for taking care of it, that's excellent!" stick to basic politeness. "Sounds good, thanks."
I also work on a developer team, and I often thank my coworkers, for example, when they complete a code review on my work, even though peer reviewing code is a basic work duty that is absolutely required, and not a favor to me.  They are still helping me succeed by their actions (making an honest effort to thoroughly review my work), even if it wasn't really optional for them to do so.
You can't prevent them from feeling like this is somehow a favor to you, but being relaxed about should be reasonably effective in conveying that you haven't taken it as an exceptional situation or personal favor, but still do appreciate their efforts.

A:

OP here
Summary of my answer:

What I didn't do.
Why I didn't want to do it.
What I have done.
What else I could have done if I had thought of it sooner.

After I received the message stating that what I was waiting for would be ready "tonight", I thought about responding:

Thanks :) 

However, the smiley face of Slack was really smiling too much, that's why I was uncomfortable using it.
I also thought about sending a simple "Thanks" but I was afraid as being seen as cold (I use smiley often when communicating and studies show that woman have to use them if they don't want to be seen as too cold).
What I did instead (and after an unfortunate delay) was to send a smiley "Thumb up" () to show that I appreciated the news.
The key word here is appreciation. I didn't thank them for anything, so they couldn't interpret the thanks as "you are doing me a favor" but I still managed to show appreciation by using the smiley.
What I could have also done (thanks to @DaveG for the idea) was to thanks them, not for the work, but for keeping me in the loop and telling me it would be ready soon. 
Telling me, in advance, that this would be done, isn't part of there job, so thanking them for that is absolutely appropriate.
I could have done something like that:

Thanks for the update!

