How notifications reach you
Why some activity pushes to your phone and some doesn't, why busy chats don't buzz constantly, and how Quiet Hours bundle held-back alerts into one summary.
Two things can happen when there's new activity: a row appears on your notifications screen, and a push alert is sent to your phone. They're separate. The row almost always appears; whether a push goes out depends on your settings and a few rules that keep your phone from buzzing too often. This explains those rules so the gaps make sense.
In-app row versus push
The notification you see when you open the app and the buzz you get on your phone are two different deliveries. Turning a type off in your push settings stops the buzz, not the row — the activity is still waiting for you when you open the app. So a quiet phone doesn't mean nothing happened.
Why busy chats don't buzz for every message
A fast back-and-forth would be unbearable if every message pushed. So message alerts are spaced out: at most one push every couple of minutes across all your chats, and at most one every few minutes per individual conversation. You still see every message the moment you open the chat — only the push is spaced out. (Muting a conversation outright is a separate, stronger control — set it from your inbox; see Organizing your inbox.)
Grouping for likes, comments, and follows
The same idea applies to social activity. Likes push at milestones for a post rather than one buzz per like; comments and new followers are grouped so a sudden burst lands as fewer alerts. The full count is always on your notifications screen — the grouping only thins out the pushes.
What Quiet Hours actually does
During Quiet Hours, non-urgent push is held back rather than dropped. When the window ends, held-back alerts arrive bundled as a single summary instead of all at once. Practitioners get the same held-and-bundled behaviour from the Working Hours mute — see Muting alerts while you work.
What Quiet Hours and Working Hours mute do
During Quiet Hours or a practitioner's manual mute, push is held back for every type you still have enabled — nothing is forced through. When the window ends, held alerts arrive bundled as a single summary instead of all at once.
Auto-mute during sessions works the same way for almost everything, with one exception: messages from the client you're currently with still push through so you can stay in touch mid-appointment. See Muting alerts while you work.
To stop pushes entirely, turn off Enable Push Notifications at the top of the Push Notifications screen.
Frequently asked questions
- A friend said they messaged me three times but I only got one alert.
That's the message spacing at work. Open the chat and all three messages are there — only the push was held back so your phone didn't buzz three times.
- I had Quiet Hours on and woke up to one summary instead of several alerts.
That's intended. Non-urgent push is bundled into a single summary when Quiet Hours ends.
See this in action
- Choosing which notifications you getTurn push notifications on or off, set Quiet Hours, and switch individual notification types on or off from the Push Notifications settings screen.
- Muting alerts while you workPractitioners can silence push notifications automatically during confirmed sessions, or mute everything for a custom window when something unplanned comes up.
- The notifications screenOpen your notifications from the bell on your own profile, find your way around the Posts, Community, Trust, App, and News tabs, and learn which activity lives on its own screen instead.
- What each notification toggle meansA plain-English guide to every push notification category and toggle on the Push Notifications screen — including what Nearby Alerts are, where Events, Jobs and Meetings alerts live, and what the Moderation Duties toggle does.
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