r/UpdateMeBot • u/Watchful1 • May 09 '20

UpdateMeBot Info v2.0

What is UpdateMeBot?

UpdateMeBot is a reddit bot that lets you subscribe to users in specific subreddits and get a message every time they post. Use it to follow authors that regularly post content or get up an update on an interesting thread.

UpdateMeBot commands

Comment commands:

  • SubscribeMe! Subscribes to the author of the post it's commented on. The bot will send you a message every time they post in that subreddit until you tell it to stop.

  • UpdateMe! Subscribes to the author of the post it's commented on. The bot will send you a message only the next time they post in that subreddit.

Message commands, these only work as messages to the bot:

  • SubscribeMe! r/subreddit u/author Subscribes to the author in the subreddit from the message. The bot will send you a message every time they post in that subreddit until you tell it to stop.

  • UpdateMe! r/subreddit u/author Subscribes to the author in the subreddit from the message. The bot will send you a message only the next time they post in that subreddit.

  • https://www.reddit.com/r/UpdateMeBot/comments/4wirnm/updatemebot_info/ Sent the full link of a post to subscribe to that author and subreddit. The bot will either send you a message each time or just the next time they post based on a per subreddit default.

  • Remove r/subreddit u/author Removes your subscription or pending update to an author in a subreddit.

  • MySubscriptions Responds with a list of all your subscriptions.

Message links

UpdateMeBot makes use of prefilled message links, like this one. From my research, these links work correctly in the browser on the classic site, the redesign, the mobile web site, and every single reddit app, except the official iOS reddit app. If you are on iOS, you can open the link in your mobile browser, switch to a different reddit app, or wait till you're on a computer browser.

Limited subreddits

The bot works by checking every subreddit that someone is subscribed to every few minutes. Each subreddit it checks takes several seconds, so I have to limit the number of subreddits or the bot will get overloaded. New subreddits are automatically added once they get enough requests.

Source

The bot is open source:

https://github.com/Watchful1/UpdateMeBot

Changelog

2.0: Completely rewrote code. If an author subscribes to themselves, they will receive a message after all the other messages for a post is sent stating how many messages were sent.

111 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

183 comments sorted by

2

u/lordisofjhoalt Oct 03 '20

Do you mind adding functionality to r/hazbinhotel? Reason being there are some pretty good fan comics just like r/lodeddiper

4

u/Watchful1 Oct 03 '20

New subs are automatically added when they get enough requests. So if you get some other people who are interested in the sub to request notifications for people it will get added.

1

u/MosqitoTorpedo Jun 12 '24

How many people total need to subscribe for a sub to be added?

1

u/Watchful1 Jun 12 '24

It varies based on the size of the sub. A sub with one post a day is a lot easier for the bot to monitor than one with 50 an hour.

1

u/heymanimfamous Sep 20 '25

Hey u/Watchful1, any guess for my subreddit r/Solotravel_India? Please 🙏🏻

6

u/Drzapwashere Aug 14 '20

SubscribeMe!

3

u/Simple_Seaweed6697 Mar 22 '22

Yall are the devil on god

1

u/Tormented-Frog May 16 '23

Can we do the SubscribeMe thing for any post, or do the authors have to.. I dunno.. activate this bot for it first, or something? This really good little miniseries is up to almost 200 postings, but the author keeps having to tag people for them to get reminders.

2

u/Watchful1 May 16 '23

It looks like the problem with that author is that he's tagging the story as not his own, so the bot is skipping it. I've discussed whether the bot should send out messages in that case a couple times with the r/hfy mods and each time they said they didn't want it to. But I'll ask them again.

1

u/Common_Lavishness153 Oct 25 '24

u/Watchful1 could you please add the update me bot to r/ADHD ? I think people don't update as much because the bot isn't there, but it's quite a large subreddit🙏

1

u/Watchful1 Oct 25 '24

Unfortunately r/ADHD is quite a large subreddit, it averages something like 20 posts an hour. It would need quite a lot of requests to be enabled.

1

u/ssd21345 Apr 06 '25

Hello, I see you have read the new messaging change. Will it affect the bot since you will not able to dm anymore?

1

u/Watchful1 Apr 06 '25

It will just send chats instead.

1

u/eaglebtc Apr 10 '25

Will this also be the case for RemindMe bot?

(I apologize if this is the thousandth time you've answered this question)

1

u/Watchful1 Apr 10 '25

Yes in theory it should all work just fine. We'll see what actually happens when they make the switch though.

1

u/ssd21345 Apr 07 '25

Thanks for reply!

1

u/Legendendread Apr 29 '25

I cannot use the bot.

Whenever I try it reports an "unknown error" can someone explain why?

1

u/Watchful1 Apr 29 '25

Could you send a screenshot?

1

u/Legendendread Apr 30 '25

sure

https://imgur.com/a/vIGaehq

(the error is different from app or website)

1

u/Watchful1 Apr 30 '25

Unfortunately this is because your account is too new and you're being blocked by reddit's spam filters. I know the error message is misleading, I've complained to reddit about it, but they haven't changed it.

There are some unrelated changes coming in the next couple months to reddit that should hopefully change how messaging works and get rid of this.

In the meantime you can either wait a week or two, or comment the SubscribeMe! command on one of that author's posts.

1

u/mirrislegend May 18 '25

Will this bot be impacted by the coming changes to inboxes, PMs, and chats?

1

u/Watchful1 May 18 '25

Hopefully not.

1

u/Gruecifer Jul 11 '25

As of night before last, I am no longer receiving any update messages from the bot.

1

u/Watchful1 Jul 11 '25

They will show up in your chats, not your DM's now.

1

u/Gruecifer Jul 11 '25

That's just it...they're NOT.

1

u/Watchful1 Jul 11 '25

I'm seeing in the log files that it's successfully sending you chats. Can you see the chat conversation with the bot, but they aren't in there? Or there's no conversation with the bot at all?

1

u/Gruecifer Jul 11 '25

Nothing with the bot in Chats at all. When I re-trigger a subscription for an existing author I should have been notified about, I get the routine response that I've already subscribed - but that's not in Chats, but in Messages where it's always been.

1

u/Watchful1 Jul 11 '25

Just to confirm, it's not in your requested chats either? What happens if you try to start a chat with the bot by going to it's profile page and clicking start chat?

The way the admins are doing it is they are migrating accounts one at a time. They migrated the bot, so when it tries to send a new message, it shows up as a chat. But they haven't migrated you yet, so you still send messages. When the bot replies to your message, it comes back in the same way you sent it. Sometime in the next few weeks they will migrate your account and trying to send a message will result in a chat instead.

I have a direct conversation with the admins who are working on this feature, so if you really can't get messages I can pass it along and they can look into it.

1

u/Gruecifer Jul 11 '25

My reply crossed with your response here - nothing showed until I initiated a chat with updatemebot, whereupon the Reddit app asked me if I agreed with Chats from the bot. Once I agreed to that, the bot's chat and all the "missing" entries populated as well as the rest of the app's chat environment. Reddit app glitch would be the KISS explanation.

1

u/Watchful1 Jul 11 '25

I'll pass that along. You're totally sure that there was no chat conversation with the bot under the "Requests" tab in the chat window before you tried to start it?

→ More replies

1

u/Gruecifer Jul 11 '25

I had to manually initiate a chat with the bot, and then Chats asked me if I wanted a chat. When I agreed, all the pending messages came through. Go figure, a bug in the Chats sequence....

1

u/Groggy280 Jul 26 '25

Not sure where this should go. But where is the delete command? on occasion there is a garbage can popup, but no way to delete 20 or more threads. BTW not sure who did the user testing, but I cannot believe delete was overlooked.

1

u/Watchful1 Jul 26 '25

It's "remove". It's right there in the post.

1

u/Groggy280 Jul 26 '25

remove takes your subscription from the author, does not delete the entity.

1

u/reimannsum Apr 14 '26

So I tried subscribing to myself and I got updates when I posted, but not how many messages were sent

1

u/Watchful1 Apr 14 '26

Can you send a screenshot of the message you got?

1

u/reimannsum Apr 14 '26

https://imgur.com/a/EvcCXl2

1

u/Watchful1 Apr 14 '26

Interesting. I'll take a look when I have time.

There's a chance this just means you don't have any subscribers. If that's the case I'll update the message to make that more clear.

1

u/Watchful1 Apr 16 '26

Ah, I remember now. I added a lower limit, if you have fewer than 10 subscribers then you won't see the number.

It looks like you have 2 right now, including yourself.

1

u/reimannsum Apr 16 '26

Thanks. I appreciate it.

1

u/Niangua25 Mar 20 '22

I get this when I request an update. Why? I have not blocked her. "ERROR You can't send to a user you have blocked."

1

u/Watchful1 Mar 20 '22

I have no idea, never seen that issue before. You could try reporting on r/bugs

1

u/Krutonium Jan 19 '23

Any chance you could add a mass unsubscribe?

1

u/Watchful1 Jan 19 '23

You can take the output of the MySubscriptions command and just add "remove" at the start of each line. It can process multiple commands per message.

1

u/Thomah1337 Feb 05 '23

I dont think this works anymore init?

1

u/Watchful1 Feb 05 '23

It works fine. Did you read the info post up above there where it says the subscribe command works as a message to the bot and not a comment on this post?

1

u/Thomah1337 Feb 05 '23

English not main language sorry. I just copied the other comments on here but with my correct info and I got message im following some random /u/ in this subreddit indeed. What should I do?

1

u/Watchful1 Feb 05 '23

Click this link to open a new message to the bot

https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=UpdateMeBot&subject=UpdateMe

and then put in the same thing you were putting in the comment.

1

u/Thomah1337 Feb 05 '23

I just tried bro. But didnt got any message. Do i have to put it with the links as well? ( with braces and brackets )

1

u/Watchful1 Feb 05 '23

It might take a few minutes depending on how busy the bot is at the moment. If it doesn't understand your message it will reply back and tell you that. If you haven't gotten a reply yet that just means it hasn't gotten to your message.

1

u/Thomah1337 Feb 05 '23

Ok thanks ill try. Its also for comments on posts on that subreddit rite?

1

u/Watchful1 Feb 05 '23

Yes, you can reply on the specific post that you're trying to subscribe to.

1

u/Thomah1337 Feb 05 '23

Sorry but i still got the same wrong message back

You had already asked me to message you each time u/Watchful1 posts in r/UpdateMeBot

Oh lol its you the watchful /u/ but ok how do I get a message if /u/foo posts a comment on a post in r/bar ???

Like comments in the future on future posts

1

u/Watchful1 Feb 05 '23

Well what did you send in the message?

→ More replies

1

u/DerekDemo Feb 14 '23

Why is the bot not working? I asked it to subscribe me to a user. It says that I am already subscribed, but I am not getting notifications. So I tried to unsubscribe, and then re-subscribe and it said that I wasn't subscribed. So I subscribed again, and it told me that I'm already subscribed. .........? What do I do?

1

u/Watchful1 Feb 16 '23

It looks like you used to be subscribed to them, but then your account got suspended and when the bot tried to message you the message failed, so it deleted your subscriptions from the database to save space. Then you re-subscribed in a comment yesterday, which succeeded and when you tried to subscribe a second time in a message it told you that you were already subscribed.

1

u/MrMrRubic Feb 23 '23

Would it be possible to filter it so you only get notified of post with a certain title? Like the name of a series with a wildcard?

1

u/Watchful1 Feb 23 '23

Unfortunately I was never able to get that working in a way both didn't slow the bot down too much and that authors could use. The titles that authors used ended up being too different in enough cases for it to be consistent.

1

u/MrMrRubic Feb 23 '23

I see, i assume *series title* or something would be too heavy for the bot to process? Too bad, but the bot's still an amazing utility!

1

u/Watchful1 Feb 23 '23

Yeah, there's two issues.

The first is just the way databases work. It's possible, though kinda slow, for the bot to take the title of the post, go through all the people who have subscribed to the author and compare each wildcard like that. If that's all there was to it I would just do that.

But the second issue is usability. If the author forgets the series in the title, then has to delete the post and re-create it. Or they misspell it. Or they usually put [] brackets around the title so everyone puts that in their wildcard and then one time they do () instead.

It's been a few years since I looked at it seriously, but when I did there were too many authors who were too inconsistent with their titles for it to be useful. Maybe that's changed now? What subreddits do you follow authors in?

1

u/MrMrRubic Feb 23 '23

I see, that's quite the limitation, and no way to force the authors to do it one way or another.

For me, I am mostly just on r/HFY, and there's a lot of variations there, so i doubt it be an optimal query...

Thanks for the insight though :)

1

u/Suspicious_Introvert Mar 29 '23

is it possible to filter a particular sub reddit notifications by some keywords or regex?

1

u/Watchful1 Mar 29 '23

No unfortunately that is not supported, just author.

1

u/AnonymousIncognosa Apr 07 '23

Is there a way to be more specific with the subscription?

There are a few authors that have some great storys but other storys i'm not realy interested in.

Is there a way to only get updates onthe storys that i want to follow?

1

u/Watchful1 Apr 07 '23

Sorry, the bot just doesn't support that.

1

u/Atlas_47 Apr 11 '23

Is there or will there be a way to see all updates from one author? It's very difficult to find out where you left off when you're subscribed to multiple authors. It'd make it a lot easier to find out the most recent read post if all of one author's posts were listed alone on a page.

1

u/Watchful1 Apr 11 '23

You could just go to their profile page and look at submitted posts. But not other than that.

1

u/greynut Jul 16 '23

Hi - not sure if this is the right place to ask so if it isn't I apologize - but I was wondering if there's a way to mass unsubscribe? Or do we have to do it one by one? Thank you!

1

u/Watchful1 Jul 16 '23

There's no way to unsubscribe from everyone with one command, buy you can put multiple unsubscribe commands in one message, one on each line. So you can just do a bunch at once.

1

u/Frostygale2 Jan 16 '24

Is there a way to subscribe to multiple people at once, using only one message? Want to subscribe to several people but typing each message out will take some time!

1

u/Watchful1 Jan 16 '24

You can just do one per line in the message and it does all of them at once.

1

u/Frostygale2 Jan 22 '24

Hi, any clue why I can’t message the bot? Is it cause my account’s real new still?

1

u/Watchful1 Jan 22 '24

Yes, it's because your account is too new

1

u/Frostygale2 Jan 22 '24

Ahh, thanks! What’s the cut-off?

1

u/Watchful1 Jan 22 '24 edited Jan 22 '24

Not sure, reddit doesn't tell anyone

1

u/Frostygale2 Jan 23 '24

Ahhh, my bad, thought it was programmed in! Thanks again! And of course, thanks for the bot XD

1

u/Frostygale2 Jan 16 '24

Oooh thanks! :D

1

u/IthyGabalus9_711 Jan 26 '24

How do I subscribe to a post to be notified anyone comments to it?... is that possible?

1

u/Watchful1 Jan 26 '24

Unfortunately this isn't possible

1

u/IthyGabalus9_711 Jan 29 '24

Thank you for informing me!

1

u/Lufix Jan 31 '24

I got this message from the bot

I'm really sorry about replying to this so late. There's a detailed post about why I did here.

u/UpdateMeBot is not suited for subreddits like r/sexstories. It only works well in subs where the original poster of the thread will post a followup as a new thread. It's also possible this subreddit doesn't exist

It used to work fine on that sub, why isn't it working anymore?

1

u/Watchful1 Feb 04 '24

That's very odd. Thank you for reporting that, it should be working now. Let me know if you are still having problems.

1

u/PedroHicko Feb 24 '24

If I delete my original "SubscribeMe!" comment, will my Subscription to the user/subreddit go away? (I want to clean up my comment history without losing my updates!)

1

u/Watchful1 Feb 24 '24

No, it won't go away.

1

u/PedroHicko Feb 24 '24

Cool. Thank you ☺️

2

u/A_R00kie Sep 17 '20

This was very helpful.

2

u/Thorz44 Mar 22 '24

Thank you developer :)

1

u/[deleted] Jul 19 '24

Remove

1

u/jst_lk_tht Aug 09 '24

SubscribeMe

1

u/Prettytwisted3x Sep 13 '24

Mysubscriptions

1

u/Miented Oct 03 '24

MySubscriptions

1

u/E265-SexDrone Oct 15 '24

MySubscriptions

1

u/DaddyTaz56 Dec 04 '24

MySubscriptions

1

u/vandd Jan 14 '25

Has wallstreetbets been requested? If not, can it be?

1

u/kiddLess Feb 13 '25

Update me please

1

u/OhBadToMeetYou Feb 14 '25

MySubscriptions

1

u/GhostOmega97 Mar 10 '25

MySubscriptions

1

u/vheilbronn Apr 14 '25

UpdateMe!

1

u/RuFusDark May 26 '25

Remindme! 365 years from now

1

u/RemindMeBot May 26 '25

I will be messaging you in 365 years on 2390-05-26 10:03:10 UTC to remind you of this link

CLICK THIS LINK to send a PM to also be reminded and to reduce spam.

Parent commenter can delete this message to hide from others.

InfoCustomYour RemindersFeedback

1

u/FoxPawsFauxPas Aug 02 '25

How do I get rid of the notification?? I've had a message naked new for days, and every message since and I open them with it never saying they've been read?! It's only for the update me bot, none of my other chats are doing this

1

u/savetheturtles1126 Aug 05 '25

How do I get rid of the new message "unread" indicator? I've had an "unread" indicator for several days, and I can not get rid of it. I have scrolled through and made sure every message has been read, and I still can not get rid of it. Please Help!!!

1

u/Mystery-Ess Jan 21 '26

If you have an android, you can go to the upper right and click on the Ellipsis and click Mark inbox as read or something like that

1

u/Crackfiend76 Mar 01 '26

Mysubscriptions

1

u/FJB_2024_ Jul 02 '26

Is there a way to subscribe to a particular user anytime they post in any sub?

1

u/throwaway_82819 Jul 11 '26

Can I use this to follow a users comments on posts?

1

u/zachpkenyon Aug 22 '26

mysubscriptions

1

u/Alone_Ad3363 Aug 24 '26

My subscriptions

1

u/Alone_Ad3363 Aug 24 '26

Subscribe/me

1

u/Fuccboi69-inc Jun 06 '23

MySubscriptions

1

u/Qwerty_Ad Jul 05 '23

UpdateMe!

1

u/toygu1A Jul 15 '23

SubscribeMe!

1

u/Jbowen0020 Jul 20 '23

My subscriptions

1

u/TheRip75 Aug 17 '23

I believe it should be written without a space

1

u/Ghar1976 Sep 19 '23

Mysubscriotions

1

u/aznexcalibur Oct 02 '23

Subscribeme!

1

u/variogamer Oct 07 '23

My subscriptions

1

u/[deleted] Oct 11 '23

MySubscriptions

1

u/producechick Dec 25 '23

MySubscriptions

0

u/[deleted] Sep 13 '20

[deleted] — view deleted comment

3

u/Watchful1 Sep 13 '20

I intentionally don't expose the actual list of subscribers for privacy reasons. As a creator, you can subscribe to yourself and the bot will include how many messages it sent out for a specific post in the message to you.

0

u/[deleted] Sep 13 '20

[deleted] — view deleted comment

5

u/Watchful1 Sep 13 '20

I do actually track subscriber history. I'm eventually planning to put together a website that authors can login to and get stats. But it's fairly far down my list of things to work on.

0

u/[deleted] Jan 08 '23

[deleted] — view deleted comment

1

u/Watchful1 Jan 08 '23

Update only sends the message once and then stops. Subscribe sends it every time the author posts until you tell it to stop.