Watchers Admin for Confluence — User Guide
Watchers Admin gives Confluence administrators one screen to see and change who watches what: clean up the watches of someone who leaves or changes teams, and manage the watchers of any page or blog post.
Who can use it
Only Confluence administrators. Anyone else who opens the screen sees "Only Confluence administrators can use Watchers Admin." Every request is checked again on the server.
Open the app
- Go to Atlassian Administration (admin.atlassian.com) and select your site.
- Open Apps › Connected apps.
- On the Watchers Admin row, open the ⋯ menu and choose Configure.
The screen has two tabs: By user and By page.
By user: clean up a person's watches
- In User, search for the person.
- The app checks the watchers of every page and blog post it can read. A progress line shows how many have been checked. On our test site, 575 pages and blog posts took about 20 seconds; larger sites take longer.
- The table lists what the person watches, with type and space, 25 rows per page. Above it, the app says how many pages and blog posts it checked, and how many it could not read.
- Then either:
- tick the content to stop watching and choose Remove selected, or
- choose Remove all watches of this user.
Remove selected takes up to 1,000 items at a time. Remove all watches of this user asks you to confirm with Yes, remove all, then removes every watch in the list. Removed watches cannot be restored by the app.
When the operation finishes, the removed content disappears from the table. Start another operation checks the site again, so the list always reflects the current state.
The app does not rely on Confluence search for this list: on our test site, search results for watched content changed from one check to the next.
Pages and blog posts the app cannot read are skipped and counted. If that number is not zero, check that the app still has access to the spaces concerned.
By page: manage the watchers of a page or blog post
- Paste the link of a page or blog post and choose Show watchers. These forms work:
https://<site>.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/KEY/pages/123456/Title- an edit link (
…/pages/edit-v2/123456) …/viewpage.action?pageId=123456- a blog post link (
…/blog/2026/11/09/123456/Title) - the page ID alone (
123456)
- The table lists the current watchers. Tick the people to remove.
- To add people, search for them in Add users as watchers.
- To add a whole group, type part of its name, choose Find groups, then pick the group.
- Choose Apply changes.
Notes:
- Adding a group adds the people who are in it now. People who join the group later are not added.
- App accounts that belong to the group are not added.
- People who already watch the content are skipped.
- If you both tick and add the same person, they are removed.
Progress and results
Changes run in the background, so you can make large clean-ups without waiting on the page. A progress bar shows how many changes have been processed. At the end you see "X of Y changes made". If some changes could not be made, the number and the last reason are shown:
| Message | What it means | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| This user cannot see this content, so Confluence will not change their watch. | The person has no access to the space or page. | Give them access first, if they should watch it. |
| Confluence refused this change. The app may not be allowed to change watchers in this space. | Confluence refused the change, possibly because the app is not a space admin there. | Check the space permissions (see below). |
| The content or the user no longer exists. | The page, blog post or account was deleted. | None. |
| The operation expired before it could finish. Please start it again. | The operation did not progress for a day. | Start it again. |
| Confluence answered (code). | Another error from Confluence. | Try again later; contact support if it persists. |
If Confluence asks the app to slow down, the operation pauses and resumes on its own.
Space permissions
Confluence only lets an app change other people's watches in spaces where the app is a space administrator. On our test site, Forge apps had this permission in every space as soon as they were installed, including spaces created afterwards. If a space admin removes it, changes in that space fail with the second message above.
What the app does not do
- It does not change watches on whole spaces, only on pages and blog posts.
- It does not act on a page tree or a whole space at once: work by user or by page.
- It does not keep group watchers in sync when the group changes.
- It does not let each user manage their own watches: it is an admin tool.
Data and privacy
The app runs on Atlassian Forge and keeps nothing for more than a day. See the privacy policy.
Support
Email support@wooddyviat.com.