Sunset notice for automatic watching of repositories and teams

[queenofcorgis]

On May 18, 2025, we’re deprecating the automatic watching of repositories and teams. We’re making this change in order to:

• Reduce notification noise: You’ll receive fewer unexpected notifications, especially when joining large organizations with many repositories.
• Improve efficiency: You’ll be able to focus on the notifications that matter most, without unnecessary subscriptions.
• Minimize confusion: You won’t have automatic watching behavior that some users found unclear or overwhelming.

Note

Existing repository subscriptions created through auto-watching will not be impacted. Users will remain subscribed to repositories or teams they were previously watching.

To review or adjust your current repository subscriptions, visit the Watching section. For more detailed notification preferences, head to Notification Settings.

Have questions or feedback, please share with us in the discussion below.

[IceUnite]

Thanks for the clarification! This is a welcome change — I often found myself overwhelmed by notifications from repos I wasn’t even aware I was watching.

For anyone wondering where to manage these settings, you can go directly to your Watching settings or customize more under Notification Settings.

💡 Tip: After joining a new organization, it’s a good idea to double-check your watch settings to avoid accidental noise.

Appreciate this update! 🙌

[labudis]

Thank you for your feedback @IceUnite!

The auto-watching feature has been deprecated today: https://github.blog/changelog/2025-05-22-sunset-of-automatic-watching-of-repositories-and-teams/

[qgustavor]

Why a deprecation instead of just making it disabled by default? To be fair, since I keep track of my GitHub notifications quite well, I'm more bothered by the notifications about reducing notifications (IIRC I blocked them using browser extensions) than by the notifications themselves, so I would leave this on.

[labudis]

While the original purpose of automatic watching was well-intentioned, it has become increasingly unpredictable and unintuitive as GitHub Organizations have grown. We've heard from users who have unknowingly accumulated over 900,000 repository subscriptions due to automatic watching, making it nearly impossible to manage their notifications. To address this, we’ve decided to adopt a model where users can individually subscribe to the repositories that interest them, giving everyone greater control over their notifications.

[qgustavor]

Sure, for users from organisations that's understandable, but for people working on small projects on small groups it's weird to be. Unless I'm misunderstanding this change of people get reminded of this change I guess I (and maybe other people) can end missing notifications from future projects affected by this change. Deprecating it instead of making it disabled by default (or even making it more granular like "only if I created the repository" or "only if it's not part of an organisation"), IMHO, it's like throwing out the baby with the water.

[labudis]

@qgustavor Thank you for sharing your additional concerns and suggestions. The default setting for automatic watching was changed to "off" several years ago; however, this change was not applied retroactively to users who joined GitHub prior to its implementation. As a result, many long-time users continued accumulating subscriptions without realizing it.

When we analyzed usage data, we found that only 0.05% of GitHub users have opted to enable automatic watching. Given these very low opt-in rates and the negative side effects caused by automatic watching, we made the decision to deprecate this feature.

[Haroenv]

So will there be no way to opt-in to automatic watching? If I notice something I don't need I unsubscribe from the notifications tab, but not knowing about new projects within my org would be unfortunate. If automatic watching must be removed, can I still get notified when a repository gets created I have access to?

[labudis]

@Haroenv automatic watching has now been deprecated. However, by default you will receive notifications for Participating and Mentions in any of the repositories you have access to.

Getting a one-time notification when you gain access to a new repository sounds like a great idea! I will log that as a feature suggestion for the team to consider.

[mdccUVa]

I also think we need more flexibility to manage notifications of the organizations we are part of. If I am transferred ownership of an organization, or I just get promoted internally to a higher-responsibility role, I may want opt-in to all notifications regarding anything from that organization. That includes watching all the existing repositories, getting notifications for newly created repositories, and automatically watching all those too. Having to manually watch all repositories in an organization sounds cumbersome, and prone to missing critical notifications (e.g., new issues opened in repositories from the organization).
In my opinion, this should be an opt-in, per-organization option.

[egrace479]

As someone who relied on this feature for just this purpose, the quiet deprecation was quite problematic. It's also extremely cumbersome to adjust settings for all repos I need to monitor in orgs as compared to just clicking through to un-watch. Could we have a "not-watching" tab listing repos in orgs we own/our repos?

As others have stated in comments on this thread, please at least make it easier to bulk watch/find repos we aren't watching that we create. Missing issues and PRs is problematic.

[GideonBear]

If I may chip in; I suddenly didn't get notifications for newly created repositories anymore, which was very confusing. I do want to watch all repositories I create, but there doesn't seem to be an option to do this automatically anymore; so now I have to watch a repository manually when I create it (which is a pain).

I think this is a good change for repositories other people create that you have access to; but I don't think it's logical to not get any notifications from a repository I created.

[yellow5]

There is a downstream effect on Dependabot usage.

Since new repositories are not followed in my organization any longer, I no longer receive Dependabot notifications for new repositories. A hidden backlog of dependency updates now builds up that I have to actively seek out.

Prior to the deprecation, all update notices showed up in my Github notifications inbox to manage Dependabot updates.

Are there existing alternatives to receive automatic Dependabot notifications for new repositories with auto-watch disabled?

[yellow5]

Following up, I found that Dependabot has an assignees option (1).

I've updated new repo creation from my organization's templates to define that in .github/dependabot.yml

(1) https://docs.github.com/en/code-security/dependabot/working-with-dependabot/dependabot-options-reference#assignees--

[scarf005]

• Reduce notification noise: You’ll receive fewer unexpected notifications, especially when joining large organizations with many repositories.
• Minimize confusion: You won’t have automatic watching behavior that some users found unclear or overwhelming.
• Improve efficiency: You’ll be able to focus on the notifications that matter most, without unnecessary subscriptions.

afaik this feature was opt-in, so the reasoning is a bit confusing, as they chose it.
could it have been defaulted to disabled instead?

[qgustavor]

I guess this list was AI generated. 👀

[DanTup]

I was susprised to learn of this change today. I found an issue had been created in one of my personal repos, and I had not had any notification.

I definitely appreciate it was noisy (I'd often been given access to an org repo and been spammed loads overnight before I woke up and "Unwatched"), but for my own repos, it felt like a better default.

It would've been nice to have kept the option, but allow it to be scoped to only created repos. I fear that I (and many others) are going to accidentally miss out on notifications because we were used to the previous default and forget to Watch on new repos.

[dickermoshe]

I've had the same experience as @DanTup

A PR author emailed me after waiting a month. Was shocked to see so many issues and pull requests on the repo. I really felt bad and apologized to the users of my repo who thought this project was abandoned.

Please rethink this

[raine]

I noticed I've missed notifications in my new repos for weeks. Honestly, what the *** was GH thinking with this change?

Solo devs that helped GH grow to where it is now matter no longer? It's all about big orgs now?

[srgykuz]

Up. There should be an option that toggles automatic watching. You can make it off by default, but user should have ability to toggle it on.

[hazae41]

Days since last missed issue or pull request caused by this: 0

[georgefst]

So a user who creates a new repository will, by default, not be notified of issues and PRs, leaving potential contributors screaming in to the void?

That is utterly absurd. I've been thinking that GitHub decision making seems dysfunctional for a while. This might be the final straw.

[qgustavor]

That's one of the reasons I'm moving out of here. The other is that my home feed is now useless. 😑