[role="xpack"]
[[managing-watches]]
== Managing Watches

{watcher} provides as set of APIs you can use to manage your watches:

* Use the {ref}/watcher-api-put-watch.html[Put Watch API] to add or update watches
* Use the {ref}/watcher-api-get-watch.html[Get Watch API] to retrieve watches
* Use the {ref}/watcher-api-delete-watch.html[Delete Watch API] to delete watches
* Use the {ref}/watcher-api-activate-watch.html[Activate Watch API] to activate watches
* Use the {ref}/watcher-api-deactivate-watch.html[Deactivate Watch API] to deactivate watches
* Use the {ref}/watcher-api-ack-watch.html[Ack Watch API] to acknowledge watches

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

Currently there is not dedicated API for listing the stored watches. However,
since {watcher} stores its watches in the `.watches` index, you can list them
by executing a search on this index.

IMPORTANT:	You can only perform read actions on the `.watches` index. You must
            use the {watcher} APIs to create, update, and delete watches. If {es}
            {security-features} are enabled, we recommend you only grant users
            `read` privileges on the `.watches` index.

For example, the following returns the first 100 watches:

[source,console]
--------------------------------------------------
GET .watches/_search
{
  "size" : 100
}
--------------------------------------------------
// TEST[setup:my_active_watch]