UNLISTEN(7)

💅 UNLISTEN(7) — stop listening, bestie 💅

okay so this is the PostgreSQL 15.19 Documentation page for UNLISTEN, and it's lowkey the unsubscribe button for notification registrations. no cap, it's giving “clean up your listener registration” energy. 🫶

✨ NAME ✨

UNLISTEN — stop listening for a notification. literally the “cancel my subscription” of the notification world 💅

🦋 SYNOPSIS 🦋

UNLISTEN { channel | * }

🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

UNLISTEN is used to remove 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. The special wildcard * cancels all listener registrations for the current session. 🎀

NOTIFY(7) contains a more extensive discussion of the use of LISTEN and NOTIFY. iykyk, go read that one too 💖

🎀 PARAMETERS 🎀

• channel — name of a notification channel (any identifier).
• * — all current listen registrations for this session are cleared. periodt.

🔥 NOTES 🔥

• You can unlisten something you were not listening for; no warning or error will appear. not me unsubscribing from a channel I never joined 😭
• At the end of each session, UNLISTEN * is automatically executed. the cleanup is automatic, bestie.
• A transaction that has executed UNLISTEN cannot be prepared for two-phase commit. highkey important caveat, so remember it.

🍓 EXAMPLES 🍓

To make a registration:

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

Once UNLISTEN has been executed, further NOTIFY messages will be ignored:

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

🌈 COMPATIBILITY 🌈

There is no UNLISTEN command in the SQL standard. so yeah, it’s giving not-in-the-standard energy, bestie 💅

👑 SEE ALSO 👑

LISTEN(7), NOTIFY(7)

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mwah 💖 — this iconic little page is from PostgreSQL 15.19, dated 2026, and it's literally called UNLISTEN(7). bye bestie 🫶