[[listing-watches]]
=== Listing Watches

Watcher stores watches in the `.watches` index. You can search this index to see what watches are
configured.

IMPORTANT:  You can only perform read actions on the `.watches` index. You must use the Watcher 
APIs to create, update, and delete watches. If you are using Shield, we recommend only granting 
users `read` privileges for the `.watches` index. 

To get the ids of all configured watches, run the following search query:

[source,js]
--------------------------------------------------
GET .watches/_search
{
	"fields" : [], <1>
	"query" : {"match_all" : { } } 
}
--------------------------------------------------
// AUTOSENSE

<1> If you omit the `fields` option, the search returns the full watch definition and status
of each watch. 