Why can I not decide which emails to receive regarding PRs?

[Ramona Plogmann]

When I get added as a reviewer to a PR, Bitbucket automatically makes me watch the PR and consequently receive an email for everything, which leads to hundreds of emails a day that I don't want and that probably will never get read. Most of my colleagues have a filter active to delete them all immediately.

However, I would like to see when somethings happens on MY pull requests or if someone mentions me or replies to a comment that I posted.

The in-app notification drawer can differentiate better (it only shows me when I have been added as a reviewer or when someone comments or approves my PRs).

As far as I can see, there is no way to limit the emails in that way or at least remove the "you automatically watch every PR you get added to".

Please prove me wrong or tell me where I can complain to try and get this changed. I can only imagine how many Bitbucket emails get deleted without being read. What a waste of resources...

[Theodora Boudale]

Hi Ramona,

Welcome to the community and thank you for the feedback.

I'm afraid that there is no option for a reviewer to not be automatically added as a watcher or for more granular PR notifications. We have feature requests for both:

• https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/BCLOUD-17148
• https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/BCLOUD-14860

These requests have been closed as 'Won't fix' because of inactivity (no votes or comments from users for an extended period of time). However, you can still add your feedback there, as our product managers continue to monitor even closed requests.

You have the option to remove yourself as a watcher from a specific PR by selecting the 3 dots menu next to the PR's Merge button > select Stop watching. However, you won't be notified if any users reply to your comments in this specific PR. Mention notifications are always sent if configure it in your account settings here https://bitbucket.org/account/settings/notifications/ (option Someone mentioning me under Email me about).

Bitbucket Cloud also has a feature to batch comments into a single review, which means that only one email notification will be sent to watchers of the PR for this specific review. I don't know if your team already uses this feature. If not, then you may want to consider it, as it can help reduce the number of email notifications.

You can read more about this feature here:

• https://www.atlassian.com/blog/bitbucket/batch-comments

Instead of leaving e.g. ten separate comments in a PR, which will lead to ten email notifications, the person doing the review can use the Start review button in their first comment. All comments added during this review session will be marked as pending, and they will all be published when the user selects Finish review, with a single email notification sent.

Kind regards,
Theodora

[Sahir Maharaj]

Hello @Ramona Plogmann

Based on my understanding, Bitbucket currently lacks granular email notification controls, which forces users to watch all PR activity they are added to.

You can manage your notifications by setting filters in your email client to organize or reduce these emails. Additionally, you can manually unwatch PRs you don’t want to follow, but this can be tedious if you’re added to many PRs daily.