# How do I access topics in muted categories?
**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-do-i-access-topics-in-muted-categories/409676
**Category:** Support
**Created:** [August 10, 2026, 8:26am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-do-i-access-topics-in-muted-categories/409676 "2026-08-10T08:26:20Z")
**Posts on this page:** 7
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@NateDhaliwal](https://meta.discourse.org/u/NateDhaliwal)
#### Post date: [August 10, 2026, 8:26am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-do-i-access-topics-in-muted-categories/409676/1 "2026-08-10T08:26:20Z")
Say I would like to see topics in categories I muted. How would I do that? On Meta, I muted the #News and Events > Forum summaries category. But going to `/?state=muted` nor `/filter?q=in%3Amuted` show them. How then would I see all muted categories, if there’s more than one so going to the catgory page is not an option? Is this a bug? While trying to build [this](https://meta.discourse.org/t/now-in-beta-plugin-to-see-tl3-progress-for-tl2-users/408543/26), I realised that even the ‘Show’ link in Preferences \> Tracking does not show the muted category’s topics (it links to `/?state=muted`). So I’m wondering if this could be a bug.
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### Author:  [@awesomerobot](https://meta.discourse.org/u/awesomerobot)
#### Post date: [August 10, 2026, 8:25pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-do-i-access-topics-in-muted-categories/409676/2 "2026-08-10T20:25:06Z")
Right there’s a bit of a gap here, `?state=muted` only covers topics muted directly… but topics from muted categories are excluded.
So what you’re trying to get is a list of topics from all muted categories?
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### Author:  [@NateDhaliwal](https://meta.discourse.org/u/NateDhaliwal)
#### Post date: [August 10, 2026, 11:11pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-do-i-access-topics-in-muted-categories/409676/3 "2026-08-10T23:11:36Z")
I see. I would have expected a link next to Muted categories to go to a place that shows me topics in those categories, or similar.
But yes, that is what I am trying to acheieve.
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### Author:  [@NateDhaliwal](https://meta.discourse.org/u/NateDhaliwal)
#### Post date: [August 12, 2026, 11:20pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-do-i-access-topics-in-muted-categories/409676/4 "2026-08-12T23:20:10Z")
@awesomerobot I’m assuming there simply is no way to do this unless something custom is built?
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### Author:  [@Moin](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Moin)
#### Post date: [August 13, 2026, 7:12am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-do-i-access-topics-in-muted-categories/409676/5 "2026-08-13T07:12:28Z")
The concept of tracking the status of categories, tags, and topics and how they interact is complicated. I think the individual topic tracking status takes precedence over the others, but the other two depend on another user preference.
So it is possible that the user has read some topics even though the category/tag is muted.
Maybe you can show the user which categories and tags they have muted. The links to those topic lists should show them the topics because they are looking at the muted category directly.
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### Author:  [@awesomerobot](https://meta.discourse.org/u/awesomerobot)
#### Post date: [August 25, 2026, 10:38pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-do-i-access-topics-in-muted-categories/409676/6 "2026-08-25T22:38:05Z")
Correct, we should really just remove that link because it’s not accurate… a route to show all the topics from muted categories would be a new feature we don’t currently have
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### Author:  [@Moin](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Moin)
#### Post date: [August 25, 2026, 11:06pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-do-i-access-topics-in-muted-categories/409676/7 "2026-08-25T23:06:38Z")
Then all of the “show” links could be removed. None of them is really about the categories. The watching link doesn’t take you to topics from categories you are watching; it takes you to the topics you are watching—which can be because you watch topics in that category by default, but also because you created the topic. Same for tracking.
I agree that muted is most confusing because topics in a muted category are still “normal” in the topic tracking. So they don’t appear in that filtered list at all.
Maybe those links should all get a new place as an option to filter the topic list with this query string, which doesn’t appear as being connected to the category tracking. Without it, unmuting topics you muted is a little difficult. I think there is no search filter, so you need to know either the query string or use the topic filter (which also requires you to know that it offers that as an option).