Help talk:Watchlist

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Person icons

My watchlist has, overnight, started putting little person icons next to user names. It's annoying and distracting. How can I remove it? Giant Snowman 21:11, 27 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

This is part of the design for Wikipedia:Temporary accounts. The described icon can be seen in the lede and in the video about infocards, File:Temporary Accounts demo - User Info Card.webm, in the section § Videos. —⁠andrybak (talk) 16:19, 2 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

EditWatchlist/raw is broken. Just me?

Moved to User talk:Cacycle/wikEd § EditWatchlist/raw is broken. Just me?

– —⁠andrybak (talk) 20:45, 19 February 2026 (UTC)

(Summary: it's been broken since 2018.) -RememberOrwell (talk) 21:39, 25 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Saved filters

I could just be a little on the blind side, but I don't see help covering saved filters. I know how to use them generally, but I was wondering if you can change the filtering choices within an existing saved filter. I have never been able to effectively do that without creating a new saved filter. Stefen 𝕋ower ^{Huddle • Handiwerk} 20:49, 5 March 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Size limit (hard or recommended)?

I just noticed that my watchlist hit 15,000 which made me wonder if there's a limit to how many pages I can watch? Will I hit some technical hard limit at some point? Or if not, would be best to stay below some number for better performance etc.? And either way, what is the magic number I shouldn't exceed? -- DoubleGrazing (talk) 15:20, 7 March 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I have over 28,000 on mine. Performance isn't too bad except that long ago I went into the raw editor to sort and cull my list, only to find that it couldn't handle the update. Largoplazo (talk) 16:55, 7 March 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Opening an older diff link makes newer entries from different days disappear from the Watchlist

If you in this example Watchlist:

15 March 2026

11:02 Same article (diff | hist). . (+28) . . User:Example (talk | contribs) (Add yet another category))

14 March 2026

00:02 Same article (diff | hist). . (+25) . . User:Example (talk | contribs) (Add another category))

13 March 2026

23:59 Same article (diff | hist). . (+43) . . User:Example (talk | contribs) (Add category)

Only opened the 13 March 2026 23:59 diff link in a new tab.
Did nothing else but opened and closed that tab (in other words without navigating to the newer versions/diffs of Same article).
Returned to the Watchlist tab and refreshed the page.
All entries from all days to Same article disappear from the Watchlist even though you never really navigated through them all.

Has the Watchlist always behaved like this? I could've sworn it didn't do that before. It used to leave the other newer entries on the Watchlist, I think. Kliituu (talk) 10:07, 14 March 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Resolved. I forgot to update that this bug was fixed within a week after this comment, so this can be archived now. I'm not sure what caused it, though. Kliituu (talk) 10:11, 21 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Organize watchlist

How do I opt out of this new dialog box?

It is supremely unwieldy. I don't need it. I don't want it.

The previous functionality was minimal, required a minimum of mouse clicks, and wasn't obnoxiously in your face. It was elegant, did it's job with zero fuss.

I am not a beginner. Let me out of newbie mode!

CapnZapp (talk) 08:52, 2 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

@CapnZapp Please consolidate at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#Watchlist button. CMD (talk) 09:02, 2 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

mention about 'saved items' button as alternative

special:readinglists doesn't notify on edits, but it can be used to save pages for later. Arlo James Barnes 19:35, 2 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Watchlist a category

The article says "Related Changes can also be used to monitor changes to pages belonging to a category," but it does not explain how to do that.

Ideally I'd like to have a way to find all changes that ORES rated Very Likely Have Problems to articles in Wikiproject Physics. Checking such a list occasionally could avoid sleeper problems with unwatched articles. Johnjbarton (talk) 02:27, 19 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]