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How to get notified when a GitHub release is published

Without getting a ton of unwanted notifications

Joel Clermont
Joel Clermont
2025-07-31

As a good open source citizen, I contributed a small fix to a package we use in one of our projects. And since the bug was stopping me from shipping a new feature in my project, I also added some code to temporarily work around the problem.

As soon as my fix was approved and merged, and a new package version was released, I could then clean up my workaround code.

GitHub sends me a notification when my pull request is merged, but how would I know when the new version is released?

I didn't want to have to remember to keep checking back periodically.

I could watch the repo, but then I'd get notifications for everything, not just the release.

Thankfully, I discovered GitHub has a "custom" option when watching a repo. When you choose to receive notifications from the Watch dropdown, you can choose that Custom option and then select exactly which types of notifications you want to receive. And "Releases" is one of the options!

I'm not sure how long this has been available, but it was a pleasant surprise to find it.

Here to help,

Joel

P.S. Another way we give back to the Laravel community is through our YouTube channel and free books.

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