UNLISTEN(7)

💅 UNLISTEN(7) — the PostgreSQL manual, but make it group chat

okay so bestie, quick vibe check: this is the UNLISTEN page from the PostgreSQL 14.24 docs, and it's honestly shorter than my attention span, so let's get into it 🎀

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✨ NAME ✨

UNLISTEN — stop listening for a notification. that's it. that's the whole name. it's giving "unsubscribe" energy 💅

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🦋 SYNOPSIS 🦋

UNLISTEN { channel | * }

literally two choices: name a channel, or hit it with the wildcard *. no cap.

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🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

so UNLISTEN is the icon that removes an existing registration for NOTIFY events 🔔. it cancels any existing registration of the current PostgreSQL session as a listener on the notification channel named channel — key word current session, iykyk.

and the special wildcard *? that cancels all listener registrations for the current session. one * and everything's gone, main character energy fr fr 👑

if you want the full deep-dive tea on how LISTEN and NOTIFY actually work together, NOTIFY(7) has a more extensive discussion of the use of LISTEN and NOTIFY. go read it, bestie 🫶

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💖 PARAMETERS 💖

• channel — the name of a notification channel. and yes, it can be any identifier, so live your truth.
• * — all current listen registrations for this session are cleared. all of them. periodt 💀

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🔥 NOTES 🔥

• ngl, you can UNLISTEN something you were never listening for, and literally nothing happens — no warning, no error. it just… vibes. 🙈
• at the end of each session, UNLISTEN * is automatically executed. the server cleans up after you, bestie, it's so caring 😭
• a transaction that has executed UNLISTEN cannot be prepared for two-phase commit. that's a real caveat, not a drill ⚠️

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⭐ EXAMPLES ⭐

first, to make a registration:

LISTEN virtual;
NOTIFY virtual;
Asynchronous notification "virtual" received from server process with PID 8448.

okay so that's you being a listener. now once UNLISTEN has been executed, further NOTIFY messages will be ignored:

UNLISTEN virtual;
NOTIFY virtual;
-- no NOTIFY event is received

see how the second one gets nothing? yeah. silence. iconic. 🤫

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🌈 COMPATIBILITY 🌈

there is no UNLISTEN command in the SQL standard. we're built different, we're off-script, we're the moment 💅

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👑 SEE ALSO 👑

• LISTEN(7)
• NOTIFY(7)

the holy trinity honestly 🫶

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and that's the whole page, bestie — no notes, ate and left no crumbs 🍓

signed, sealed, delivered by the PostgreSQL 14.24 docs, dated 2026, on the UNLISTEN(7) page itself 🧚💜