Update (August 14, 2026): Pausing the custom thread subscriptions deprecation

We’re pausing the planned deprecation of custom thread subscriptions. Your feedback highlighted how integral this feature is to many developers’ notification workflows. And the specific examples you shared, particularly around managing high-volume repositories and staying focused on the events that matter, helped us better understand its value beyond what our usage metrics captured.

We also clearly heard that the change moved too quickly and without enough notice. That’s on us, and it’s something we’ll do better on going forward. Custom thread subscriptions have been restored, and any subscriptions that were converted to Subscribed should return to their previous settings. While we continue exploring improvements to notifications and evaluating our overall approach, the Customize option will remain available.

We appreciate everyone who took the time to share their perspectives. Your input was instrumental in our decision to step back and reassess our plans.

Original changelog below.

You’ll no longer be able to configure custom thread subscriptions for GitHub notifications.

Custom thread subscriptions screenshot

What’s changing

As part of this rollout, GitHub will remove support for custom thread subscription settings.

If you currently rely on this feature, please note that the Customize option in the thread-level notification settings will be completely removed. After this change, only Subscribed and Not subscribed options will be available for a thread.

All existing custom subscriptions will be converted to Subscribed, and users will receive notifications for all events in those threads. If this becomes too noisy, users can unsubscribe from any affected thread.

Why we’re making this change

This change simplifies your notifications experience by:

  • Simplifying notification behavior.
  • Reducing subscription complexity.

What you need to do

No immediate action is required for most users.

If your workflow depends on custom thread subscription behavior, we recommend reviewing your notification settings and team communication patterns as this rollout progresses.