The auto-open widget, when enabled for a specific post, causes the widget to automatically open and display that post to users as soon as they access your site or app. This means users don’t need to click or interact with anything to see the latest update; it appears immediately in the notification center or changelog feed.
Benefits
Immediate Visibility: When enabled, the widget automatically opens for users as soon as they access your site or app, ensuring that your latest update or announcement is instantly seen without requiring users to click or search for new information.
Increased Engagement: By proactively displaying your changelog post, you significantly boost the likelihood that users will read and interact with your updates, which can lead to higher feature adoption and better user awareness of changes.
No Manual Action Needed: Users don’t have to take any action to discover new posts; the content is presented front and center, reducing friction and the chance that important updates go unnoticed.
Enable the auto-open widget
To automatically open the widget for your posts:
Create or edit a post.
Select the Auto-open widget from the Post settings. (See note below.)
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Click Accept to confirm you want to enable this feature.
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Note
The auto-open widget is not available if you’ve selected a boosted announcement such as Topbar, Tooltip, Popup, or Snippet.
If auto-open isn't opening the widget
Auto-open only works once the Beamer widget has initialized. Two settings can stop that from happening:
lazy: truein your embed script. With lazy loading on, Beamer doesn't initialize at all until your code callsBeamer.init(). Until that happens there's no widget loaded, so a post with Auto-open widget enabled won't open. This is the most common reason auto-open appears to do nothing.A boosted format on the post. Auto-open isn't available on Topbar, Tooltip, Popup, or Snippet posts, as noted above.
Also worth checking: Auto-open is a per-post setting, not an account setting. There's no global switch. So if the widget is opening when you don't expect it to, look for which individual post has Auto-open enabled rather than for a setting to turn off.
Choosing when the widget opens
Auto-open is one of three settings that affect when the widget loads and opens. Which one you want depends on the behavior you're after:
You want… | Use |
|---|---|
Nothing to appear until the user clicks something |
|
The widget to load, but only open when clicked | Leave |
One specific announcement to open on its own | Auto-open on that post — see above |
Only some users to get Beamer at all |
|
Your own button instead of the default floating one |
|
No button at all, opened only from your own code |
|
If you're embedding Beamer inside another platform's app — a Shopify app, for example — lazy: true plus an explicit Beamer.init() on user action is usually the right pattern. It keeps Beamer from rendering into an interface where you don't control the surrounding UI. Hide the default button with button: false at the same time, or it will keep rendering alongside whatever you've built.
For the full beamer_config parameter list, see Beamer Developer Documentation.