Jira is able to send automated email notifications about updates regarding issues to users. Normally, notification emails will only be sent out to the issue's reporter, assignee, and people who have registered interest in the issue. This behavior can be changed through notification schemes, which we will discuss in Chapter 8, Emails and Notifications.

You can register your interest in the issue by choosing to watch the issue. By watching an issue, you will receive email notifications on activities, such as new comments and issue updates. Users watching the issue can also choose to stop watching and thus stop receiving email updates from Jira. You can also add other users as watchers by adding them to the watcher's list.

To watch an issue, simply click on the Start watching this issue link. If you are already watching the issue, it will change to Stop watching this issue. If you click on the link again, you will stop watching the issue, as shown in the following screenshot:

Jira also shows you how many people are actively watching the issue by displaying the total watchers next to the watch icon. You can click on the number next to Watchers to see the full list of watchers, and add new users as watcher to the issue.