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After a site administrator upgrades your Enterprise Server instance to Enterprise Server 3.9 or later, the REST API will be versioned. To learn how to find your instance's version, see "About versions of GitHub Docs". For more information, see "About API versioning."

Watching

Use the REST API to subscribe to notifications for activity in a repository.

About watching

You can use the REST API to subscribe to notifications for activity in a repository. To bookmark a repository instead, see "Starring."

Watching versus starring

In August 2012, we changed the way watching works on GitHub. Some API client applications may still be using the original "watcher" endpoints for accessing this data. You should now use the "star" endpoints instead. For more information, see the REST API "Starring" documentation and the Watcher API Change post.

In responses from the REST API, subscribers_count corresponds to the number of watchers, whereas watchers, watchers_count, and stargazers_count correspond to the number of users that have starred a repository.

List watchers

Works with GitHub Apps

Lists the people watching the specified repository.

Parameters for "List watchers"

Headers
Name, Type, Description
`accept` string Setting to `application/vnd.github+json` is recommended.
Path parameters
Name, Type, Description
`owner` string Required The account owner of the repository. The name is not case sensitive.
`repo` string Required The name of the repository without the `.git` extension. The name is not case sensitive.
Query parameters
Name, Type, Description
`per_page` integer The number of results per page (max 100). Default: `30`
`page` integer Page number of the results to fetch. Default: `1`

HTTP response status codes for "List watchers"

Status code	Description
`200`	OK

Code samples for "List watchers"

get/repos/{owner}/{repo}/subscribers

curl -L \
  -H "Accept: application/vnd.github+json" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer <YOUR-TOKEN>" \
  http(s)://HOSTNAME/api/v3/repos/OWNER/REPO/subscribers

Response

Status: 200

[
  {
    "login": "octocat",
    "id": 1,
    "node_id": "MDQ6VXNlcjE=",
    "avatar_url": "https://github.com/images/error/octocat_happy.gif",
    "gravatar_id": "",
    "url": "https://HOSTNAME/users/octocat",
    "html_url": "https://github.com/octocat",
    "followers_url": "https://HOSTNAME/users/octocat/followers",
    "following_url": "https://HOSTNAME/users/octocat/following{/other_user}",
    "gists_url": "https://HOSTNAME/users/octocat/gists{/gist_id}",
    "starred_url": "https://HOSTNAME/users/octocat/starred{/owner}{/repo}",
    "subscriptions_url": "https://HOSTNAME/users/octocat/subscriptions",
    "organizations_url": "https://HOSTNAME/users/octocat/orgs",
    "repos_url": "https://HOSTNAME/users/octocat/repos",
    "events_url": "https://HOSTNAME/users/octocat/events{/privacy}",
    "received_events_url": "https://HOSTNAME/users/octocat/received_events",
    "type": "User",
    "site_admin": false
  }
]

Get a repository subscription

Gets information about whether the authenticated user is subscribed to the repository.

Parameters for "Get a repository subscription"

Headers
Name, Type, Description
`accept` string Setting to `application/vnd.github+json` is recommended.
Path parameters
Name, Type, Description
`owner` string Required The account owner of the repository. The name is not case sensitive.
`repo` string Required The name of the repository without the `.git` extension. The name is not case sensitive.

HTTP response status codes for "Get a repository subscription"

Status code	Description
`200`	if you subscribe to the repository
`403`	Forbidden
`404`	Not Found if you don't subscribe to the repository

Code samples for "Get a repository subscription"

get