The updated dashboard-feed looses important functionality (no more commits)

[hostep]

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As of today, when I visit https://github.com/dashboard-feed, I'm seeing a almost identical copy of the homepage feed.

This is pretty bad, because the homepage feed didn't show me what I'm interested in, which is to see commits that happen on repositories that I'm watching. Now that the homepage feed is copied to /dashboard-feed I'm loosing that functionality.

Why was this done? Dashboard-feed was my daily go-to page to see what the repositories I'm watching are working on and what's coming. Can this please be reverted? It would be terrible to keep this in the current state. You have the homepage feed for the releases and what have you and we had dashboard-feed for more detailed info. I'm really interested in seeing commits from repo's I'm watching in the feed, that has been working for many years like that, please don't kill this feature, it would be a big mistake.

Thanks for listening and I hope this will get changed (reverted) again very soon...

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[girishlade111]

You're right, and you are not the only one who has noticed and been frustrated by this. GitHub recently updated the /dashboard-feed to redirect to the main "For you" feed, effectively removing the classic chronological commit feed that so many developers relied on.

Why This Change Was Made

GitHub's stated goal was to unify the two feeds into a single, algorithmically-driven "For you" feed. The new feed is designed to show you what GitHub considers to be the most relevant activity, which includes a mix of new releases, discussions, stars, and popular repositories, rather than just the raw, chronological firehose of commits from projects you watch.

The Impact (You're Not Wrong, It's a Big Loss)

The problem, as you've correctly pointed out, is that for many developers, the most important signal was the raw commit feed. It provided a simple, passive way to keep a pulse on the actual development progress of projects you follow. Removing this functionality has left a significant gap.

How to Track Commits Now (The Workarounds)

While the integrated feed is gone, there are a couple of ways to get that information back, though they require a bit more setup.

1. The RSS Feed Method (Best Option)
   This is the most powerful way to recreate your old feed. Every repository's commit log has a hidden RSS/Atom feed that you can subscribe to using a reader like Feedly, Inoreader, or even some email clients.

Go to any repository you want to follow.

Click on the "Commits" link to view the commit history.

Copy the URL from your address bar (e.g., https://github.com/torvalds/linux/commits/master).

Add .atom to the end of the URL: https://github.com/torvalds/linux/commits/master.atom.

Add this new URL to your RSS reader.

You can do this for all the repositories you care about to build your own custom, chronological commit feed.

2. The "Watch" Notifications Method
   This is GitHub's intended replacement, but it can be very noisy.

Go to the repository's main page.

Click the "Watch" button.

Select "All Activity".

This will send notifications for all commits, PRs, and issues to your GitHub notifications inbox. For a busy project, this can quickly become overwhelming.

[tvrusso]

Thank you for the hidden RSS info. It's a bit of a hassle having to go that route, but it's better than the current broken feed algorithm.

The most important information GitHub can tell me is when projects I'm following have had commits, not what random people I've followed have starred or when someone starts following me. This ain't social media.

The Watch feature doesn't actually send any such information --- it's only PRs and issues.

[hostep]

Thanks for the workarounds, I'm already using the watch option and the incoming notifications in the inbox, but that only deals with PR's and Issues, not with commits, at least not in my experience, and I've used it for many years already so I'm pretty sure I'm not wrong about this.

I'll give it a few days (and hope somebody will revert this decision to destroy the dashboard-feed) and if it doesn't get fixed, I'll see if that atom feed is a good solution, but I really hope they'll just revert this.

[girishlade111]

thanks for confirming. Your years of experience are right—the "Watch" feature does not notify you about individual commits, only about PRs, Issues, and Releases. The RSS/Atom feed is indeed the only real workaround for getting a raw commit history right now.

I completely understand your frustration and why you'd prefer a direct revert over a workaround. The /dashboard-feed was a simple and powerful tool for many developers, and hoping for its return is a sentiment shared by many in the community.

Thanks again for sharing your perspective. Let's hope, as you do, that this feedback is taken into consideration.

[dhirschfeld]

PLEASE REVERT!

I went to the dashboard feed because the For You feed is a dumpster-fire for professional developers. I don't care how many resources you want to funnel into that trash heap, just leave the old dashboard-feed alone.

It served a purpose which was to surface important/relevant information about the development in the repositories I care about. Keep the AI junk for the vibe-coders and let other people work how they want.

[galaxyhaxz]

I noticed this today and see it now completely lacks any info on my repositories and their activity, or the things I'm watching, and instead just has various recommended random things. This is quite sad... I remember a few years ago when they did this to the main page and tons of people posted here asking them to revert it, to which they ignored every single one and did it anyway. I'd expect no different with this change either, for now you might be able to use a workaround via API, but in time that too will eventually be broken.

It's sad but this is how it is... Microsoft has made a few nice improvements to github since they acquired it, but they can also do pretty much whatever they want with it and people are stuck here because like Reddit, it's too big to fail and too many people need it for work as well.

[guest271314]

Yeah, moving targets for no reason. I thought the "dashboard-feed" was kinda working alright until it got changed to include "recommended".

You know, it's alright to just leave stuff alone sometimes.

[galaxyhaxz]

It's the same reason why facebook removed the chronological timeline of posts from people you follow and replaced it with an algorithm: they want to force doom-scrolling onto us. Odd considering github doesn't have ads...

[guest271314]

Odd considering github doesn't have ads...

It does. For "GitHub Universe", "Copilot", etc.

[galaxyhaxz]

It does have those, but not the traditional types where it injects them randomly into the feed as you scroll through. I guess maybe leading more people to repos that have sponsorships enabled as github likely gets a cut, could count. Still egregious and they could have spent no energy just leaving it be.

[guest271314]

Yeah, the just "updated" the "dashboard-feed", again, to include "recommendations" or "suggestions". I think the "Copilot" advertisement, and actual incoporation into the repository UI was more eregious than a mere advertisement to use "Copilot" https://github.com/orgs/community/discussions/65856