Unsubscribing from a topic using email

[Discourse]

This guide describes how to unsubscribe from a topic using email notifications.

Required user level: All users

Emails from Discourse can be customized to only receive the notifications you care about. If you’d like to opt out of notifications for a particular topic via email, follow these steps.

Steps to unsubscribe from a topic

1. Locate the Unsubscribe Link:
   Open the email notification you received from the Discourse forum and scroll to the bottom.
   You’ll find a section that says “To unsubscribe from these emails, click here.”

   

2. Click the Unsubscribe Link:
   Click the provided link. This will open the Discourse unsubscribe page in your browser.

3. Choose Your Unsubscribe Options:
   The unsubscribe page presents several options depending on your current notification settings for the topic:

   • Stop watching this topic — if you are currently watching the topic, this option (checked by default) will reduce your notification level to tracking.
   • Mute all notifications for this topic — if you are not watching the topic, this option (checked by default) will mute it entirely.
   • Stop watching all topics in [category] — appears if you are watching the topic’s category, letting you unwatch the entire category at once.
   • Turn off mailing list mode — appears if you have mailing list mode enabled.
   • Don’t send me any mail from [site] — stops all email notifications from the site.

   Select the options you want and click the Unsubscribe button.

   

4. Confirmation:
   After submitting, you’ll see an “Email preferences updated!” confirmation page. It includes a link to your email preferences page where you can make further adjustments.

Tip: Many modern email clients also support one-click unsubscribe via the List-Unsubscribe email header. If your email client shows an “Unsubscribe” button at the top of the email, clicking it will automatically unsubscribe you from that topic’s notifications.

Best practices

• Regularly review your subscriptions to avoid unnecessary notifications.
• Use the Discourse web interface for more granular control over your notification preferences — look for the notification control button at the bottom of any topic.

Common issues and solutions

Issue: I still receive email notifications after unsubscribing.

• Solution: Ensure that you selected the appropriate options and clicked the Unsubscribe button on the unsubscribe page. If you only stopped watching a topic, you may still receive some notifications — consider muting the topic instead.

Issue: The unsubscribe link doesn’t work.

• Solution: Unsubscribe links expire over time. If your link has expired, you’ll see a message saying the subscription couldn’t be found. In that case, visit the topic directly on the Discourse site and adjust the notification level using the topic notification control.

Issue: I’m logged in as a different user.

• Solution: If you’re logged into Discourse as a different user than the one who received the email, the unsubscribe page will ask you to log out first and then revisit the link.

FAQs

Can I resubscribe to a topic after unsubscribing?

• Yes. Visit the topic on the Discourse site and use the notification control at the bottom of the topic to set your preferred notification level (Watching, Tracking, Normal, or Muted).

Does this unsubscribe from all topics or just one?

• By default, it only affects the specific topic from the email notification. However, the unsubscribe page also offers options to unwatch the entire category or stop all emails from the site — these are separate checkboxes you must opt into.

Additional resources

For more detailed information on managing notifications, refer to these resources:

• Configuring Default Notification Settings for Users
• Configuring Activity Summary emails

Last edited by @hugh 2024-06-20T06:12:13Z

Last checked by @hugh 2024-06-20T06:12:19Z

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