This annoying prefix is new since recent updates. How do I get rid of it? My users dislike it intensely. It only just started happening along with other recent turbulence such as mail not going out. I am unbale to figure out what template needs to be edited. Where does this preview stuff come from?

[image] Andro: This annoying prefix What do you mean? What prefix?

I think you can customize the individual preview texts as was suggested in Change in behaviour re mail - #11 by supermathie. You can find more about editing texts in Customize text in Discourse So, for example, to prevent “Someone replied to a topic you are Watching,” you would remove the site text in user_notifications.user_posted.preview. You cannot leave it empty, but you can use an invisible character like ㅤ. You can see the difference here: [Screenshot_20260119_123546_Gmail] You can do the same with all the other preview texts.

[image] Andro: My users dislike it intensely. That’s very strange. The point of the change, as I see it, is to give people more info about why the message landed in their inbox. Funny that knowing that is something people would feel “intense” about. People just hate change.

[image] pfaffman: That’s very strange. The point of the change, as I see it, is to give people more info about why the message landed in their inbox. The problem is not that information has been added. The problem is that by merely occupying part of the limited screen space available for message previews, the text takes away useful information that was there before - specifically, a line of text from the body of the message. I pre-filter Discourse messages into a dedicated maibox, so I already know why the messages got there. I now see this new text in the preview of every message in that mailbox instead of text that actually previews the message. It’s not useful to me, and displaces something that is. It also seems that this text appears for the first message of a new topic. In that case it simply isn’t true - the message isn’t a reply to anything. Martyn

Oh. I’m convinced. That does seem terrible. You can customize that text, though (probably that was mentioned above and I’m too lazy to look back?). Maybe just “watching” or an eyeball emoji?

[image] pfaffman: You can customize that text I’m not the admin of the Discourse server though, and in any case for all I know other users might like it. I can’t see anything to change it in my personal preferences. Martyn

[image] m1maj: I’m not the admin of the Discourse server though Then my solution doesn’t help! Sorry

Just tagging onto this topic to say that our community’s users aren’t liking it either. Where the preview used to give them useful information, now it’s become meaningless. -Brad

If you’re an admin you can change the text as i suggested.

Someone replied to a topic you are Watching

Product Support

chapoi January 19, 2026, 10:36am 3

I think it is about this commit maybe?

https://github.com/discourse/discourse/commit/17e6ea96abfd60ad8f05702a5fcff434e6195ac8

And prefix = preview, I think

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Someone replied to a topic you are Watching

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