# Global tracking selection
**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/global-tracking-selection/18891
**Category:** Feature
**Created:** [August 15, 2014, 11:49am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/global-tracking-selection/18891 "2014-08-15T11:49:39Z")
**Posts on this page:** 7
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@heinrich5991](https://meta.discourse.org/u/heinrich5991)
#### Post date: [August 15, 2014, 11:49am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/global-tracking-selection/18891/1 "2014-08-15T11:49:39Z")
# Situation
Currently there’s a tracking selection for each topic on its own and for read topics.
Then there’s a tracking selection for each category – but unfortunately not for the “top-level” category of the forum, that means that I either have to track all categories (and hope no new categories get added) or set read topic tracking to always and manually click on each topic to track it.
# Proposal
Add a tracking selector to the top-level “Categories” view which affects **all** new topics.
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### Author:  [@lake54](https://meta.discourse.org/u/lake54)
#### Post date: [August 15, 2014, 3:43pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/global-tracking-selection/18891/2 "2014-08-15T15:43:47Z")
I’m unsure what you mean, is this to get a notification of new **categories** that have been created?
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### Author:  [@heinrich5991](https://meta.discourse.org/u/heinrich5991)
#### Post date: [August 15, 2014, 9:38pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/global-tracking-selection/18891/3 "2014-08-15T21:38:19Z")
No, this is about automatically tracking or watching new topics in general, regardless in which category they are.
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### Author:  [@codinghorror](https://meta.discourse.org/u/codinghorror)
#### Post date: [August 15, 2014, 9:43pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/global-tracking-selection/18891/4 "2014-08-15T21:43:34Z")
If you want to watch all topics _you enter_, there is a setting for that.
But watching all topics that are created, no, there is no setting for that. You’d need to watch every category. That seems reasonable as long as the # of categories is not too large.
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### Author:  [@Dannii](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Dannii)
#### Post date: [February 25, 2019, 10:36pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/global-tracking-selection/18891/5 "2019-02-25T22:36:37Z")
We’ve just migrated from phpBB, and a few of our users [are somewhat upset](https://intfiction.org/t/how-do-i-view-unread-posts/40502) that the unread page behaves differently. Just checking that there’s still no way to track everything short of adding all the categories to the tracking list (about 30 in our case.)
Also, I’m not sure even that will do it. Does the unread page show topics from a tracked category that you’ve never entered? From my tests I don’t think it does.
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### Author:  [@codinghorror](https://meta.discourse.org/u/codinghorror)
#### Post date: [February 26, 2019, 12:06am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/global-tracking-selection/18891/6 "2019-02-26T00:06:30Z")
What they generally want is the red “last visit” line, which is automatic in most topic lists. Everything below that line predates your last visit.
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### Author:  [@chapoi](https://meta.discourse.org/u/chapoi)
#### Post date: [December 4, 2025, 11:31am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/global-tracking-selection/18891/7 "2025-12-04T11:31:41Z")