This help page is ahow-to guide. It explains concepts or processes used by the Wikipedia community. It is not one ofWikipedia's policies or guidelines, and may reflect varying levels ofconsensus.

Shortcuts WP:CUSTOMWATCHWP:CUSTOMWATCH WP:CUSTWATCHWP:CUSTWATCH

There are a number of ways in which you cancustomize yourwatchlist. This can make watching pages for changes easier.

Watchlist customization begins with the options provided by theWatchlist tab on thePreferences page. These include "Expand watchlist to...," which you can select in order to see all changes to a page rather than only the last one (which may have been an automated bot edit, or marked as minor, i.e., something less significant than, for example, the edit just before it – or, depending on other preference settings, may usually be hidden). Another option is "Group changes by page..." on the "Recent changes" tab, which, for example, enables changes to the same page on the same day to be grouped together (useful if you have a large number of frequently changing pages on your watchlist).

Twinkle has the option to automatically add articles it's used on to your watchlist. To change this setting, go toWikipedia:Twinkle/Preferences

Although it is currently disabled by default, a formatting feature has been made available that highlights changes in your watchlist that you haven't seen yet.^[1]

To activate this feature with its default bold styling, enable the following item in your Preferences:

• Preferences →Gadgets → Display pages on your watchlist that have changed since your last visit in bold.

If you want to enable this feature manually using code, instead of using the gadget described above, add this inyour common.css page:

.updatedmarker{background-color:transparent;color:#006400;}.mw-special-Watchlist.mw-changeslist-line-watched.mw-title{font-weight:bold;}.mw-special-Watchlist#mw-watchlist-resetbutton{display:block;}

To activate the feature with an alternate style, you can instead add one of the following toyour common.css page.

Use dotted underline

black

.mw-changeslist-line-watched.mw-title{font-weight:normal;border-bottom:1pxdotted#000;}.mw-special-Watchlist#mw-watchlist-resetbutton{display:block;}

or grey

.mw-changeslist-line-watched.mw-title{font-weight:normal;border-bottom:1pxdotted#999;}.mw-special-Watchlist#mw-watchlist-resetbutton{display:block;}

Use italic text

.mw-changeslist-line-watched.mw-title{font-weight:normal;font-style:italic;}.mw-special-Watchlist#mw-watchlist-resetbutton{display:block;}

Annotation with small green stars

.updatedmarker{background-color:transparent;color:#006400;}.mw-changeslist-line-watched.mw-title{font-weight:normal;background:url(//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/ac/Pentagram_dis.svg/13px-Pentagram_dis.svg.png)no-repeatleft;/* @noflip */padding-left:16px;}.mw-special-Watchlist#mw-watchlist-resetbutton{display:block;}

Annotation of unwatched edits with green background (like on Wikimedia Commons)

.updatedmarker{background-color:Lime;color:#006400;}

If the feature is ever enabled site-wide, by default, you may use one of the following methods, which will disable the formatting, the relatedMark all pages as visited button, and the green update notices on History pages. Onlyone of the four methods described below is necessary. They all basically do the same thing.

• Import CSS styling via #"/wiki/Special:MyPage/common.js" title="Special:MyPage/common.js">your common.js page:

importStylesheet('User:Equazcion/RemoveRecentUpdateMarkers.css');

• Import CSS styling via CSS: Add this code toyour common.css page:

@importurl('//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Equazcion/RemoveRecentUpdateMarkers.css?action=raw&ctype=text/css');

• Use #"/wiki/Special:MyPage/common.js" title="Special:MyPage/common.js">your common.js page:

importScript('User:Equazcion/RemoveMarkAll.js');

• Manually insert CSS code: Add this code toyour common.css page:

.mw-changeslist-line-watched.mw-title{font-weight:normal;}#mw-watchlist-resetbutton,.updatedmarker{display:none;}

As an alternative or in addition to using the watchlist feature, you can also define auser style for links to selected pages. Inyour common.css page put a list of lines like:

a[title="pagename"]{color:white;background:red;font-size:150%;}

This may not work in all browsers, however.

On the (Enhanced) Recent Changes page it works like the bolding feature mentioned above, but it is more versatile, e.g. allowing extra emphasis on pages one isvery interested in, or different styles for different categories of interesting pages. Furthermore, it also works on user contributions pages, and on regular pages (also for piped links, but not for indirect links through a redirect). It also applies, less usefully, for the section editing links in the page itself.

To highlight links to the given page also from other websites, including interlanguage links, use instead of the above:

a[href="full URL"]{...}

Note that the full URL is needed, even to highlight links from the same project, even though theHTML code uses the relative URL /wiki/pagename.

Add toyour common.css page the lines you want toremove from thelog entries; for modifying the appearance thedisplay:none; has to be replaced with a relevant CSS code (like from the "modified notification"-section above):

/* For all */.mw-special-Watchlisttable[class*="mw-changeslist-log"]{display:none;}/* For deletion entries */.mw-special-Watchlisttable[class*="mw-changeslist-log-del"]{display:none;}/* For the user creation log */.mw-special-Watchlisttable[class*="mw-changeslist-log-newuser"]{display:none;}/* For the move log */.mw-special-Watchlisttable[class*="mw-changeslist-log-move"]{display:none;}

Add toyour common.css page the following line to remove the[rollback] link shown after every line:

.mw-special-Watchlist.mw-rollback-link{display:none;}

Or to removeall rollback links, including from history pages:

.mw-rollback-link{display:none;}

The following user scripts allow for more flexibility than the CSS method:

• User:Mr. Stradivarius/gadgets/ConfirmRollback - highly configurable rollback confirmation/hiding script; adjust rollback link behaviour by page and device type
• User:MusikAnimal/confirmationRollback - scripts to add rollback confirmation dialogs, available in mobile and desktop versions
• User:Zvn/confirmwatchlistrollback.js - simple rollback confirmation script

You can also use custom JavaScript to alter the links. For example, to completely remove them from your page, add the following toyour common.js page:

$('span.mw-rollback-link').remove();

If you want to make sure it only removes the links from certain pages, you can wrap it in a conditional statement:Start the conditional check withif ( and end it with){
Then select the pages you want it removed from out of the list below separating each with a conditional or ||

• mw.config.get( 'wgCanonicalSpecialPageName' ) === 'Watchlist'
• mw.config.get( 'wgCanonicalSpecialPageName' ) === 'Recentchanges'
• mw.config.get( 'wgCanonicalSpecialPageName' ) === 'Contributions'

Next, the above$('span.mw-rollback-link').remove(); goes in andmake SURE that you close the conditional statement with} at the end!!!

An example that would remove it from Watchlist and Recentchanges but leave it on Contributions would look like:

if(mw.config.get('wgCanonicalSpecialPageName')==='Watchlist'||mw.config.get('wgCanonicalSpecialPageName')==='Recentchanges'){$('span.mw-rollback-link').remove();}

Administrators can completely remove block links from their page by adding the following toyour common.js page:

$('span.mw-usertoollinks').each(function(){var$elem=$(this);$elem.children('a:last').replaceWith("-");$elem.html($elem.html().replace(" | -",""));});

If you want to make sure it only removes the links from certain pages, you can wrap it in a conditional statement:
Start the conditional check withif ( and end it with){
Then select the pages you want it removed from out of the list below separating each with a conditional or ||

• mw.config.get( 'wgCanonicalSpecialPageName' ) === 'Watchlist'
• mw.config.get( 'wgCanonicalSpecialPageName' ) === 'Recentchanges'
• mw.config.get( 'wgCanonicalSpecialPageName' ) === 'Contributions'

If using more than one of these, you can shorthand it as in the example below
Next, the above code goes in andmake SURE that you close the conditional statement with} at the end!!!

An example that would remove it from all three pages could look like:

varwgCSPN=mw.config.get('wgCanonicalSpecialPageName');if(wgCSPN==='Watchlist'||wgCSPN==='Recentchanges'||wgCSPN==='Contributions'){$('span.mw-usertoollinks').each(function(){var$elem=$(this);$elem.children('a:last').replaceWith("-");$elem.html($elem.html().replace(" | -",""));});}

It is possible to hide pages in your watchlist usingCSS, viayour common.css page. This makes it possible, for example, to watch a page without the associated talk page appearing in your watchlist. SeeWikipedia:Hide Pages in Watchlist for instructions.

There are many user scripts written in JavaScript available for greater customization of Watchlists, for example:

• Smart Watchlist - A script that offers several watchlist customization options.
• User:Js/watchlist - adding unwatching links to the watchlist; different sorting, expand/collapse all hidden edit (if using "Enhanced Recent Changes")