GH Forum Question: Watch vs. Notify?

[njbair]

What's the main difference between Watch and Notify? They seem very similar to me.

By default, a thread is set to watch when you post a reply. But notifications are handled manually, unless you explicitly set the "automatically turn thread notifications on when I post a reply" option. I also noticed that the Tapatalk forum app uses notify, not watch, when you star a post.

AFAIK, the main difference between the two is that Notify will send you emails, but Watch just lists updates under the "Watched" tab. Is that pretty much the only difference? It just seems redundant to have both.