# Someone replied to a topic you are Watching
**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/someone-replied-to-a-topic-you-are-watching/393781
**Category:** Support
**Created:** [19 בינואר, 2026, 10:25am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/someone-replied-to-a-topic-you-are-watching/393781 "2026-01-19T10:25:52Z")
**Posts on this page:** 14
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Andro](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Andro)
#### Post date: [19 בינואר, 2026, 10:25am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/someone-replied-to-a-topic-you-are-watching/393781/1 "2026-01-19T10:25:52Z")
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?
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### Author:  [@zogstrip](https://meta.discourse.org/u/zogstrip)
#### Post date: [19 בינואר, 2026, 10:32am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/someone-replied-to-a-topic-you-are-watching/393781/2 "2026-01-19T10:32:44Z")
> [@Andro](#):
>
> This annoying prefix
What do you mean? What prefix?
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### Author:  [@chapoi](https://meta.discourse.org/u/chapoi)
#### Post date: [19 בינואר, 2026, 10:36am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/someone-replied-to-a-topic-you-are-watching/393781/3 "2026-01-19T10:36:43Z")
I _think_ it is about this commit maybe?
[https://github.com/discourse/discourse/commit/17e6ea96abfd60ad8f05702a5fcff434e6195ac8](https://github.com/discourse/discourse/commit/17e6ea96abfd60ad8f05702a5fcff434e6195ac8)
And prefix = preview, I think
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### Author:  [@Moin](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Moin)
#### Post date: [19 בינואר, 2026, 11:36am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/someone-replied-to-a-topic-you-are-watching/393781/4 "2026-01-19T11:36:33Z")
I think you can customize the individual preview texts as was suggested in [Change in behaviour re mail - #11 by supermathie](https://meta.discourse.org/t/change-in-behaviour-re-mail/393205/11).
You can find more about editing texts in [Customize text in Discourse](https://meta.discourse.org/t/customize-text-in-discourse/36092)
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:
You can do the same with all the other preview texts.
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### Author:  [@pfaffman](https://meta.discourse.org/u/pfaffman)
#### Post date: [19 בינואר, 2026, 3:54pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/someone-replied-to-a-topic-you-are-watching/393781/5 "2026-01-19T15:54:29Z")
> [@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.
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### Author:  [@m1maj](https://meta.discourse.org/u/m1maj)
#### Post date: [31 בינואר, 2026, 1:51pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/someone-replied-to-a-topic-you-are-watching/393781/6 "2026-01-31T13:51:52Z")
> [@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
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### Author:  [@pfaffman](https://meta.discourse.org/u/pfaffman)
#### Post date: [31 בינואר, 2026, 2:07pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/someone-replied-to-a-topic-you-are-watching/393781/7 "2026-01-31T14:07:19Z")
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?
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### Author:  [@m1maj](https://meta.discourse.org/u/m1maj)
#### Post date: [31 בינואר, 2026, 2:49pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/someone-replied-to-a-topic-you-are-watching/393781/8 "2026-01-31T14:49:34Z")
> [@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
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### Author:  [@pfaffman](https://meta.discourse.org/u/pfaffman)
#### Post date: [31 בינואר, 2026, 4:38pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/someone-replied-to-a-topic-you-are-watching/393781/9 "2026-01-31T16:38:33Z")
> [@m1maj](#):
>
> I’m not the admin of the Discourse server though
Then my solution doesn’t help!
Sorry
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### Author:  [@BradCray](https://meta.discourse.org/u/BradCray)
#### Post date: [17 בפברואר, 2026, 5:47pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/someone-replied-to-a-topic-you-are-watching/393781/10 "2026-02-17T17:47:36Z")
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
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### Author:  [@pfaffman](https://meta.discourse.org/u/pfaffman)
#### Post date: [17 בפברואר, 2026, 8:04pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/someone-replied-to-a-topic-you-are-watching/393781/11 "2026-02-17T20:04:58Z")
If you’re an admin you can change the text as i suggested.
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### Author:  [@BradCray](https://meta.discourse.org/u/BradCray)
#### Post date: [18 בפברואר, 2026, 12:30am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/someone-replied-to-a-topic-you-are-watching/393781/12 "2026-02-18T00:30:05Z")
I’m an admin of our Discourse instance, but not of our server (we’re an open-source project, benefitting from Discourse hosting our forums), so don’t believe I can make the change you suggested?
I’ve spent time today trying to improve things using the instructions provided by @Ethsim2 in:
> [@Change in behaviour re mail](https://meta.discourse.org/t/change-in-behaviour-re-mail/393205/4):
>
> @Andro yep - totally fair question. The “suddenly” part is because %{header\_instructions} isn’t something you changed locally: it’s a core-provided block that Discourse injects into a number of notification emails. If core changes its wording or when it’s included, everyone will notice immediately even if no admin settings were touched. I don’t want to overclaim without a specific commit reference, but the most likely cause is a recent core change to the default text that %{header\_instructions…
but have been coming up short (I’d comment there, but that thread is closed). Specifically:
- I tried removing `%{header_instructions}` from key templates (e.g., “User Mentioned”, “User Watching First Post”, “User Watching Category or Tag”) as suggested, but it didn’t seem to have any effect. Mails received after that point in OWA still just showed “Someone replied to a topic you are Watching” as their preview rather than a snippet of the message body.
- In addition, with that change, the subject lines of our mails changed from “%{topic\_title}” to “[%{email\_prefix}] %{topic\_title}” despite the fact that I didn’t touch the templates’ subject line boxes, just the bodies.
As @m1maj has said, I (and my users) feel baffled as to why OWA previews have gone from being a useful preview of the mail body to a boilerplate piece of text that overrides the actual message content and is sometimes inaccurate (e.g., showing up in mails that are first posts in a new topic in a watched category rather than being replies to a watched topic).
-Brad
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### Author:  [@Moin](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Moin)
#### Post date: [19 בפברואר, 2026, 4:35pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/someone-replied-to-a-topic-you-are-watching/393781/13 "2026-02-19T16:35:57Z")
> [@BradCray](#):
>
> m an admin of our Discourse instance, but not of our server (we’re an open-source project, benefitting from Discourse hosting our forums),
You can change site texts from within the interface; you don’t need access to the server for that. My example was done on a forum that is hosted by Discourse too.
> [@Someone replied to a topic you are Watching](https://meta.discourse.org/t/someone-replied-to-a-topic-you-are-watching/393781/4):
>
> I think you can customize the individual preview texts as was suggested in [Change in behaviour re mail - #11 by supermathie](https://meta.discourse.org/t/change-in-behaviour-re-mail/393205/11). You can find more about editing texts in [Customize text in Discourse](https://meta.discourse.org/t/customize-text-in-discourse/36092) 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: You can d…
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### Author:  [@BradCray](https://meta.discourse.org/u/BradCray)
#### Post date: [19 בפברואר, 2026, 6:01pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/someone-replied-to-a-topic-you-are-watching/393781/14 "2026-02-19T18:01:26Z")
@Moin : Aha, thanks for correcting my misunderstanding! Something I’d read on these threads, combined with my own failure to find the right settings the first time, led to my thinking that this wouldn’t work for Discourse-managed sites. But you’re right that it does.
For others like me who have admin privileges on their Discourse and may need a helping hand, here’s the approach in a nutshell:
1. Click on the triple-bar menu in the upper right near your user icon and select “configure details”
2. Scroll down until you see “Site texts” on the left sidebar. For me, it’s the last item in the “Appearance” section
3. At this point you should see a “Site texts” page that starts with a search bar. Type `.preview` into that search bar:
4. Among other things, this should filter down to entries like “user\_notifications.user\_quoted.preview”, “user\_notifications.user\_posted.preview”, " user\_notifications.user\_replied.preview", “user\_notifications.user\_mentioned.preview”, which are the main cases that were annoying our users. Click on the “Edit” buttons of any you’d like to change.
5. As @Moin says on the linked issue above, these can’t be left blank or simply replaced with a space, but they can be set to a non-breaking space, like ’ '.
6. This will cause the old preview text to be replaced by the new text. In the case of a non-breaking space like the one above, this should restore most of the previous preview text from the body of the message itself.
Thanks again, @Moin!
-Brad