The software that powers our forum gives you lots of control over what you see when you come here and the notifications you get when there is new content. In this articles we will talk about muting.
What is muting?
When something or someone is muted, you will no longer get any notifications about new content or—in the case of topics—even see them in your list of topics on the home page. You can always change these settings.
Muting a category
Categories are the broad grouping of topics, and there may be whole categories you aren’t interested in seeing on your feed. For example many people won’t be interested in the suggestions and corrections offered in the Feedback category.
To do this, you first need to go to the category you want to mute. You can get there by going to the category list, or simply clicking on the category in the heading of a topic:
Once you are on the category page, look for the 
bell icon:
Click on that icon and you will see a bunch of options:
Muting is the most extreme. It means that unless there is a link to a post in the category somewhere, you won’t ever see these posts.
The opposite is watching. This means that the posts won’t just appear on your home page but you will also get a notification with every new post and every new topic in this category.
Muting a topic
Sometimes it’s just a single topic you are no longer interested in. There are two places to find the setting for this.
Anytime you are reading a post on desktop, you can see the bell icon in the bottom right corner:
You can also see a larger version of the button at the very bottom of the topic:
You will see slightly different options here, but muting is at the bottom:
Muting tags
We don’t use tags so much here on the forum, but it’s still possible to mute them. For example, lets say you don’t want to see posts dealing with AI.
First, on the home page, click on the Tags interface and search for the tag you want to mute:
Once you select it, you will suddenly see the bell icon at the top of the page:
This will give you identical options as for categories.
Muting people
First you need to know the user’s exact name. When you see it, copy it.
Next, go to your own prefrences page and click on “users”
Now you will see a different sort of interface:
The first is for ignoring the content + notifications from a specific user. Click the “+ Add…” button to add the user name. Ignoring someone means that their content will be hidden from you and you will not be notified of their content.
The second is for muting. This is for blocking any notifications that might come from this person. This is the less severe of the two. Click the “+” at the end of the field below the heading.
Bonus: Muting a Mailbox
Some staff and volunteers may have additional mailboxes besides the regular inbox. This can be muted too:
Last edited by @Snowbird 2026-08-11T02:48:32Z