You do need the npub for it to work correctly (until NIP-42 is supported by Damus).

A good way to test if it is working or not is to go to the universe/global view, click the 3 lines in the top right corner, and toggle off all other relays except filter. Then leave the global view and come back to it to refresh the events. If it loads events, it’s working correctly! Then you can re-enable whichever relays you would like in your global view.