Updates to your GitHub Feed

[tuves]

Your homepage feed will now have a singular, consolidated feed that aggregates content from your starred repositories and followed users. As part of this update:

The content from the “Following” feed has been combined with the “For you” Feed, so you’ll have one singular location to discover content.
For those looking to customize, we’ve enhanced the filtering controls, enabling you to tailor your feed to display only the event types that matter most to you. Including:

• Announcements (special discussion posts from repositories)
• Releases (new releases from repositories)
• Sponsors (relevant projects or people that are being sponsored)
• Stars (repositories being starred by people)
• Repositories (repositories that are created or forked by people)
• Repository activity (issues and pull requests from repositories)
• Follows (who people are following)
• Recommendations (repositories and people you may like)

We’ve given the entire interface a fresh and visually appealing makeover ✨

What this means for you

If you’re an existing “Following” feed user, your feed content should be familiar to what you’ve been seeing on your “Following” tab. And now, with our new filtering control, you can fine-tune your content preferences to further curate your feed.

If you’re an existing “For you” feed user, we’ve also defaulted your filtering to showcase what you currently see on your “For you” tab. The new filtering control allows you to further customize your feed by including or excluding specific content types.

New users, we’ve got you covered with default settings that ensure you’re seeing the most relevant content. Dive in, personalize, and make the feed your own!

---

Sept. 12th Update

With the latest feed update on September 6, 2023, we made changes to the underlying technology of the feed to improve overall platform performance. As a result, we removed the functionality for “push events for repositories a user is subscribed to”. We don’t take these changes lightly, but as our community continues to grow tremendously, we have to prioritize our availability, user experience, and performance.

Thanks to feedback from the community, we have updated our changelog to clarify and have fixed the following bugs from the initial September 6th release:

• We were showing releases for organizations that you follow, instead of only showing them for repositories that you watch or star. This is now fixed.
• We have also addressed a problem where 'Followed You' cards were sometimes appearing out of chronological order.
• We do not plan to re-include “push events for repositories a user is subscribed to” for the reasons listed above, but we will continue to address feedback as it aligns with our platform goals.

We understand that many of you are upset with the recent changes to your feed. We should have done a better job communicating recent changes and how those decisions relate to our broader platform goals. Your continued feedback is invaluable as we evolve and continue to strive to provide a first-class developer experience that helps every developer be happier and more productive.

[ghost]

its comically bad. I only unchecked the recommendations, and now I get basically nothing:

https://github-production-user-asset-6210df.s3.amazonaws.com/126826528/266170659-77453c51-6c79-45a7-a3da-e92b53a325d3.png

compared to previously, where I would get helpful information on people starring or forking my repos:

https://github.com/dashboard-feed

also, here is a thread from yesterday, where over 300 people are voicing similar concerns:

https://github.com/orgs/community/discussions/66244

[woheller69]

https://github.com/wangrongding/github-old-feed also runs in my new FREE Browser for Android

https://f-droid.org/de/packages/org.woheller69.browser/

[israr089988888]

Great, but please be aware that your script entirely conceals the previous popup that used to prompt users to log in with SSO to view organization changes.

[ClaszyCat]

Thanks For the Script!

[HarshanaJayasekara]

❤️

[mahmoodkhosravi]

thanks again

[beeman]

Please, GitHub, listen to the feedback of the users and keep the option to have a chronological timeline like we had until yesterday.

You tried the same about 10 months ago and the experiment failed, and yesterday it happened all over again.

The chronological feed works great for a lot of people, it helps discover new repos and people to follow, and it motivates working on things because you can see who starred your repo. And best of all, because it's chronological, you know when you are caught up reading because you recognize what you already saw before.

Having the algorithmic option on the side doesn't hurt, and it might be the preference of some people, but please, pretty please with cherry on top, just leave the option that's been there for years and works great.

Not everything has to become like Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram. We are here to get work done, not engage with whatever your algorithm thinks we like.

[Bluemangoo]

SORT BY TIMEEEEEEEEE!!!!!

[wigy-opensource-developer]

You already got our behavior data collected, but do not try to twist our behavior to your taste or there will be mass-migration away from your platform. Not every kind of people tolerate brainwashing.

[mehdihadeli]

It is very bad interface, and it is not useful, stared repositories for my following are missed and don't show correctly. Please revert this change to old version

[Dreykon2074]

yep

[SeleneCosmia]

I used the old following feed to discover new repositories I wouldn't have discovered otherwise based on the stars of people I followed, and there isn't any way for me to see that anymore it seems. It shows me nothing at all and there isn't any option to see things that were perfectly functional before this change? Why is every single website these days implementing anti-user-friendly features in favor of increasingly over-complicated algorithms.

[brendanzab]

Yeah this is one of the things I find so heartbreaking about it (posted my own discussion about it here). I no longer see all those quaint little repos the people I followed were starring… now only all these releases from these massive, popular projects.

[Xinayder]

Sorry, can you please inform me who are the designers responsible for this change? They should be fired.

[softworkz]

Without knowing the strategic goals and whether this change aligns with or contradicts to those goals, there's no point in discussing "firings".
In either case, "developer dissatisfaction" is a red herring for MS and it won't be ignored.
The immediate question for now, is from where (from which executive level) it came from, and how (and how quickly) the negative user response will circle back to the executive level from where it originated.

[itsjavi]

@kjkrum This discussion is just 2 weeks old. But I agree, even if after 2 weeks of feedback they just released it then it's not a mistake, it's deliberate. I didn't know this was a thing until one day ago when my feed suddenly changed.

[sgf]

Stop being a good guy all the time. If you do something wrong, you should take responsibility. This behavior wastes so many people’s time and energy. You should pay some price. Otherwise no one will remember this lesson.
I support firing product managers and interaction designers. Because this is a piece of shit.

[0xMF]

I want to see commit messages from repos I want to watch in chronological order. I cannot get that now as there is no option to view commits from watched repos and no way to revert my timeline to previous from this bs

[beeman]

Right - the issue is not that they are trying something new, the issue is that they remove the option that is preferred by a lot of people.

Twitter pulled the same trick earlier this year where they made For You the only option, then they would show For You each time you open the app, then they finally gave the Following feed back.

Ik hope GitHub will consider the same.

[Zren]

no way to revert my timeline to previous from this bs

Exactly. Normally there's a toggle in Feature Preview.

[takeda]

witter pulled the same trick earlier this year where they made For You the only option, then they would show For You each time you open the app, then they finally gave the Following feed back.

They seem to be doing exactly that, just in reverse

[swiknaba]

Agreed. The most useful section on the page is Recent activity which has like 10% of the screen. 80% of the screen is completely useless: this need feed, Latest changes, and Explore repositories. I'm here to work and focus on what is relevant for my job. If I want to explore and distract my self, I can go to Twitter X 🤣

[Ethkuil]

Respect your users and their confidence in you, "Microsoft" GitHub.

[oblique]

@tuves I have Stars enabled but I can not see the repositories being starred by people. Is this a bug? Where do we report bugs?

[ashleykleynhans]

I am also having this issue with the update where I am no longer seeing my repositories being starred by people. This was one of the most useful features of the feed for me and now its not working anymore 😢 .

[filhodanuvem]

Same here :(

[gusmanb]

Same here.

[coder-layne]

Same here.

[Jrebel-i]

Same here.This is my favorite feature

[kurtmckee]

@tuves I want to see the people starring my repos, and the people who have started following me, and I want it in chronological order.

It's impossible to recreate that with the new feed, and the design is absurdly bad for something that's been under development for so long.

For example, with nothing in the filters checked, it shows "8". After checking just "following", the filter count decreases to "7". ...WHAT? The counter is nonsensical.

And the actual design is now taking up an enormous amount of space with duplicate information and huge margins:

How many times do I need to see the same icon?

Please give me back the chronological, non-algorithmic dump of current information that was relevant to me. This new thing is comically bad, and I'm angry that you've taken something of value from me.

[bytefish]

@kurtmckee The counter is the icing on the cake. It’s so comical to see the box with “8 filters”, when I actually selected none. I call into question, that it should be called a filter at all. After suffering through the new code search and code view, I take this with a portion of humor… and say goodbye to a useful timeline I found interesting people and projects with.

[kurtmckee]

Update: Turns out some kind soul has created a script to restore the original feed:

https://github.com/Gerrit0/old-github-feed

@tuves I'm sorry that so much time was spent developing something to remove value to me from GitHub. I hope that GitHub will restore chronological feed information, but at least I can use browser extensions to nullify that development effort.

[Bluemangoo]

8? No, it just means that you unselected 8 filters🤣

[obfuscatedgenerated]

I want it in chronological order

I don't even understand how the new ordering is intended to work. Notifications from 3 month old stale repos are heading straight for the top, and some change order each time I refresh (o_O)

[theAkito]

If I have only filters enabled, that interest me, literally nothing is shown anymore. If I enable all filters, I get literally only useless information in big card boxes, I do not care about, the slightest bit.

[obfuscatedgenerated]

If you’re an existing “Following” feed user, your feed content should be familiar to what you’ve been seeing on your “Following” tab

Not one bit.

[kurtmckee]

💯 I've disabled all of the filters.

@tuves please post again when filter number 9, the "original information in chronological order" filter, is introduced.

...VERY weird to call it a "filter", and to count down from 8 if I mistakenly tick any of the "filters".

[theAkito]

Indeed. It's basically like they integrated some foreign social platform into my feed, after removing my feed, completely.

[Daniel-Diaz]

The old feed was useful to me. The new one doesn't give me anything I want. Not even commits from the repos I follow. Where is all the stuff? You said you "combined" them, but I can't see any of the stuff I used to.

[danBamikiya]

@tuves Github can't keep doing this to us. Give us the old home feed. This new home feed is incredibly stressful and useless.

[obfuscatedgenerated]

They could've at least made this a beta toggle while they take feedback rather than forcing it on us all. I definitely don't remember this new "combined" feed being available as a beta, only the "For You" tab (which was just as bad!)

[nbelyh]

If it is an improvement, please give an option to configure OLD feed.
So that in your new fancy feed, it is still possible to get the things exactly like they were before.

If the motivation behind is to earn some money with "sponsored" content you are contemplating, then I hate you.

[tbranyen]

Felt compelled to leave a comment. The feed change is useless to me and I really wish it would stop changing radically. I want to see activity of those I follow in chronological order. Not looking for intelligent facebook algos or needing to adjust filtering. Just want a simple timeline.

Thanks for hearing our feedback on this.

[cuducos]

You say customize, but how the heck can I bring back chronological order to my feed?

Seriously, GitHub, why do you even host this feedback platform if the point is just to ignore tons and tons and tons of user feedback?

[obfuscatedgenerated]

why do you even host this feedback platform if the point is just to ignore tons and tons and tons of user feedback

Microsoft moment

[danielhoherd]

Every time I accidentally wander into the default feed I'm amazed at how unhelpful it is. There's still so much noise that cannot be removed without also removing useful content. Thankfully dashboard-feed is still working, but honestly I'm anxious that GH will break that too, or get rid of it. It's not a great feeling having your daily workflow in the hands of an organization who makes big, negative changes to default app behaviors, and then goes pretty much radio silent.

[ghost]

Today I have archived my repositories and in the next few days I will unsubscribe, Github can do what it wants.... me too. No new feed. No 2FA. Goodbye

[FranBar1966]

Time thieves, they want us to spend our lives looking at things that don't interest us and clicking where they are interested.

I keep the account but stopped using it years ago.

[chinmaydd]

Absolutely horrendous change. Revert it back to the old feed.

[RichardScottOZ]

This is much worse...does not even go back as far?

[jkgit]

I use github for work, it isn't a social site. Your changes to force this feed on me make it harder to quickly access repositories and pull requests which are really the only thing I need from github. Please revert to the original homepage which focuses on the core purpose of github. Maybe you can provide a link for people who want a news/follow feed in github? I'd love to see the stats on how often it is used. It took a while but the new owners are certainly disappointing.

[Daniel-Diaz]

There are browser extensions that restore the old feed, in case you are interested.

[designbyadrian]

The old feed wasn't much better.

[rick-wubs]

Could you please stop showing random repos in my home page? I really don't need advertisements on my Github thank you very much.

[designbyadrian]

Still no option to only see MY repositories and organisations.

[JonathanPort]

I'll be frank, no matter how cool you make the "for you" stuff, the homepage still isn't great for myself and I believe a lot of people. I think the most common thing I do is:

• go to github.com
• Scan the screen for a repository I want to get to
• get frustrated when I don't see it
• get even more frustrated when I can't find a "View all repositories" button
• click onto the profile menu
• finally click the "All repos" link nested somewhere within
• look around for a repo
• get even more frustrated I can't find it
• realise the repo I'm looking for is in an organisation
• click on menu again and go to orgs
• click the org
• finally find the repo after a lot of scrolling

Idk, I know I can just search but I'm dumb and a lot of the time I can't think of the repo name, I'm not even thinking as I do it, it's just daily habit, as soon as I stop to think of a repo name and where it exists, I lose flow

as a dashboard goes, it's not great for this most common use case.

I think a very simple solution is to allow the user to customise what their dashboard looks like. Currently 99% of the information on the github dashboard I do not care about. I'd happilly remove it all for a screen that shows my profile, orgs and repos. There's nothing else more important, although the social stuff is cool. That can exist along side it, but these fundamentals need to be nailed otherwise you are failing your core user base.

[charukiewicz]

I just wanted to echo very similar sentiment. I wrote out suggestions in a separate discussion (#111010) before seeing this thread and your comment. I think your experience of using the home page is spot on (and tragic).

[ckuethe]

Aaaaaaaand it's broken again. Still. Some more.

People I'm following did things I'm interested in within the last couple of days. New feed doesn't show it, old feed does.

[beeman]

The feed has become a total useless piece of junk again. On desktop I use an extension to get the old feed back. On mobile that doesn't work and the first item that shows in my feed is from a week ago.

Will github ever get their shit together again? I know it's wishful thinking 🥲

[RobThompson-Randseco]

Why do I keep getting shown things I have flagged as not being interested in?

[beeman]

Because it's a lousy algorithm that they're testing in production by shoving it up our throat. That's why.

[adamrgreyodysseyconsult]

what do people hate about every social media platform?

1. the people on it
2. the company that owns it using it as a vector to advertise products nobody wants (e.g., copilot)
3. messing with the feed so it's something other than a timeline of things we care about

can't wait to see more ads for copilot in the "for you" feed 😆

[beeman]

Even Twitter under one of the biggest AI fanboys Elon Musk is not so dumb that they keep the algorithmic feed as the only option. However, the GitHub leadership seems to think it's all just jolly effin awesome cause it's AI. 😢

[nikolaydubina]

literally came here to say that I forgot there is a Feed in GitHub. it is so bad I deselected all the fields many months ago because it is so bad, and forgot there is Feed in GitHub. well done. nice product.

[danielhoherd]

I just decided to unsubscribe from everything like you do because the experience is actually better. I'd rather see nothing and have to navigate to /dashboard-feed to see the useful content, than wait for the slow home page to load up a bunch of useless garbage.

[ssokolow]

Well, that's useless now. I've unchecked everything until there's an option I can check to only show activity on my own repos.

I don't have accounts on social media (aside from a Mastodon account which I basically use only for posting, not reading) for a reason. I don't need the noise.