To get push notifications working, you can try each of these steps until your device is receiving push notifications:

Check Common Settings

Verify the Device Is Enabled

Visit your Pushover dashboard and find your device under Your Devices.  If the device is listed as Disabled, click its name and set it to Enabled if the option exists.  If it is marked as Offline, proceed to the next steps.

Unmute Notifications

Open the main Settings app on your device, then tap on Notifications and make sure that its Do Not Disturb mode is not enabled, and that notifications are enabled for the Pushover application.

Disable Notifications, then Re-enable Notifications

This step can force iOS/iPadOS or Android to generate a new push notification token for the Pushover app, which may resolve the problem.

Open the main Settings app of your device, tap on Notifications, then Pushover, and disable Allow Notifications.

Next, open the Pushover app and you should see a warning indicating that notifications have been disabled.  If not, you may want to force-close the app and open it again.

Finally, open the Settings app again, then tap Notifications, then Pushover, and enable Allow Notifications.  Open the Pushover app again and the warning should be gone. Close the Pushover app and try to send a test message to your device from your dashboard.

Restart the Device

Sometimes notifications stop working because of a problem on the device, unrelated to any specific app. Restarting the device can easily fix this. Hold down the power button of your device until you see a prompt to power off the device, then select it and power it back on.

Verify Notifications are Working in Other Apps

If your device is not receiving any push notifications from other apps installed on the device, then there may be a problem with the device or your network. Common apps to check are social media apps that send notifications, such as Facebook, Instagram, Google Hangouts, Snapchat, Vine, etc. (Note that some apps like e-mail clients, WhatsApp, and SMS/Messaging use their own notification delivery mechanisms.)

On Android, you can use a 3rd party test app like Push Notification Tester to verify that push notifications work on your device.

iPhone and iPad

Verify Notification Settings

Open the main Settings app on your device, then tap on Notifications. Ensure that Pushover is listed, and tap on it.  Make sure that Allow Notifications is enabled. You will most likely want Lock Screen alerts to be enabled, and Sounds.

Apple Watch

Reinstall Pushover Watch App and Complications

If your watch is no longer reachable with our Glances API, uninstall the Pushover app from the watch by opening the Watch app on your iPhone, then tap on Pushover under Installed On Apple Watch, and turn off "Show App on Apple Watch".  If the Pushover complication is still on your watch face, edit it and select a different complication.

Then re-install the Pushover app on the watch in the Watch app on your iPhone by tapping INSTALL next to Pushover under Available Apps.  Once installed, you can re-add the complication on your watch face.  Tap on the complication to open the Pushover app and open the Pushover app on your iPhone.  After it syncs, you should again be able to send data through our Glances API.

Android

Disable Wi-Fi Sleep Optimization

Android has an option that can put the Wi-Fi radio into a very low power mode to conserve battery power. Unfortunately this option does not work very well in some environments, which can cause your device to go completely offline while its screen is off instead of waking up when it has new notifications pending. To disable this setting, open the system Settings app, then Wi-Fi, then press the Menu button, then Advanced, and set "Keep Wi-Fi on during sleep" to "Always".

Disable Battery Optimizations

Some phone vendors that ship with customized versions of Android have overly aggressive battery optimization mechanisms that kill or prevent the startup of background services which can affect Pushover's ability to receive push notifications. You will need to disable these battery optimizations for the Pushover app depending on your device vendor.

For more information on disabling battery optimizations on non-standard versions of Android, see the website Don't Kill My App.

• Huawei
  Mark Pushover as a Protected App by opening the System Settings, then Advanced Settings, then Battery Manager, then Protected Apps, and enable Pushover to run when the screen is off.
• Lenovo
  Enable auto-start for Pushover by opening the Settings app, then Power Manager, then Background App Management, and make sure Pushover is enabled.
• OnePlus
  Enable auto-launch for Pushover by opening the Settings app, then Apps, then the gear icon, then Apps Auto-launch, and make sure Pushover is enabled. Also disable battery optimization by opening the Settings app, then Battery, then Battery Optimization, find the Pushover app, and make sure it is not "optimized".
• Oppo
  Add Pushover to the list of allowed start-up apps by opening Security Center, then Privacy Permissions, then Startup Manager, and allow Pushover.
• Samsung
  Disable battery optimization for Pushover by opening the Settings app, then Apps, then the menu button in the corner, then Special Access, then Optimize Battery Usage. Tap on "Apps not optimized", then switch it to all apps and then switch off battery optimization for Pushover.
• Xiaomi
  Enable autostart for Pushover by opening the Security app, then tap on Permissions, then Autostart, and make sure Pushover is enabled.

If your vendor is not listed here or the instructions did not work, you may need to look around in the system settings or the vendor's proprietary manager applications to determine how to flag the Pushover application as "protected" or exempt from these battery optimizations. Additional information may be available on your phone vendor's support website.

Verify Data Syncing

If your Android device receives push notifications on WiFi but not while on on a mobile data network (3G/HSPA/4G/etc.), you may have "mobile data" disabled. Open the Settings app on the device, tap "Data usage", and verify that "Mobile data" is turned on. If you are not receiving push notifications on WiFi or mobile data, verify that "Background data" for your Google account (2.3+) is enabled, or that "Auto-sync data" (4.0+) is enabled.

Verify Google Services Framework

If your Android device is still not receiving push notifications after reinstalling, there may be a problem with the Google Services Framework on your device. This is a common service that runs on the phone and provides communication between Google's servers and your device and is responsible for delivering push notifications to Google Talk, Google Play, and applications like Pushover.

If there is a problem with your Google Services Framework, there is unfortunately nothing we can do to resolve it on our end. It is a problem with your device and will affect all applications that use push notifications. An easy test is to login to Google Talk on your phone, switch out of the application, then login to Gmail on your computer and send yourself an instant message. If you don't receive it on your device, your push notifications are not working.

To try to resolve the problem with the Google Services Framework, you can try removing your Google account from the device (in Settings -> Accounts & sync -> your Google account -> Menu -> Remove account) and then re-adding it. Next, logout of the Pushover app by tapping the Settings button, then reboot the device. Re-add your Google account, and then login to the Pushover app again.

Advanced

Verify WiFi Connectivity and Firewalling

If your device is connected to a WiFi network, try disabling WiFi to force it onto the mobile data network. Then send your device a notification from the dashboard. If your device receives the new notification, then you may be on a WiFi network that is blocking access to Apple's or Google's servers. For iOS devices, outbound TCP port 5223 is required to be open to establish a persistent connection to Apple's servers. For Android devices, outbound TCP port 5228 is required. For Desktop devices, outbound TCP port 443 is required.

Reinstall Pushover

If you are still not receiving push notifications in Pushover but are in other apps, you may need to reinstall the app completely.  To prevent a possibly-corrupted database or settings, we recommend uninstalling/deleting the app, then rebooting the device, and then reinstalling it from the App Store or Google Play (do not restore it from a backup).  Unfortunately this means you will lose your local database of messages stored on the device.

Testing if the problem is with Pushover or the 3rd party app

From your dashboard (requires that you are logged into our website), enter a test message into the "Push Notification" area and click "Send Notification".

If you do not receive your test message on your device within a few minutes, please see Common Problems in the menu on the right.

If you do receive your test message, then your device and your Pushover service are working properly and the problem is with the 3rd party software or website you are using.  Before contacting the author of that software or service for support, double-check that you have entered your user key properly (which can be found on your dashboard and from within the Settings menu of your device client). It should be 30 characters long and not have any spaces.

Finally, if you do need to contact the 3rd party software author for support, let them know that you have successfully received test messages sent from our dashboard and that you have verified your user key.

Pushover Network Issues

Pushover has a network status page where we list any issues with our service.  If we are having delays sending out notifications, or if Apple's or Google's notification servers are having problems, we will update our network status page.

E-Mail Gateway Delays

Our E-Mail Gateway receives e-mails and turns them into Pushover notifications, but we can only do this once we actually receive the e-mail.  E-mail is a fairly slow delivery mechanism and often has to relay through several servers before reaching our gateway.  Unfortunately there is nothing we can do to speed up delivery of e-mails that have not yet reached our servers.

If you are seeing delays receiving Pushover notifications from e-mails, try sending directly to your devices through your dashboard.  If notifications are received right away, the delay is most likely the e-mail server you are sending through.

Android Delays

Many Android vendors tweak their version of Android to aggressively kill background services to conserve battery power.  One of these background services is often Google Play Services, which Pushover (and most other Android apps) rely on to receive push notifications.

Some also have issues with certain Wi-Fi networks where the device goes into a deep sleep (again to conserve battery power) but it does not wake up quickly to receive Wi-Fi traffic such as a pending push notification.  The device wakes up every 30 or 60 seconds or so, and only then is the pending push notification received.

To troubleshoot this problem, try having your device unlocked with the Pushover app open on screen, and then send a message from your dashboard.  If the message is received right away with the screen on, but after significant delay with the screen off, it is likely one of these power saving measures.

Additionally, you can try this with the device's Wi-Fi disabled, forcing your device to its mobile connectivity.  If messages are received right away when not using Wi-Fi, it may be a Wi-Fi power saving issue or possibly a network issue with your Wi-Fi.

To disable these overly-aggressive power saving measures, we recommend the site Don't Kill My App for vendor-specific instructions, or you can contact your Android vendor for further help.

Since these issues are with your specific device or its version of Android, we cannot help resolve these issues.  Our app can't do anything to display push notifications if the notifications are not reaching your device.

Advanced: IPv6 Issues

For users sending Pushover notifications from their own servers, one issue we occasionally see is a broken IPv6 configuration.  Pushover's API (api.pushover.net) is reachable by IPv4 and IPv6, but if your server's IPv6 connectivity is not working properly, it will attempt to connect over IPv6 first, wait for the connection to timeout, and then fallback to an IPv4 connection which works right away.  This results in delays of 30-60 seconds each time a message is sent to our API, but the delays is happening before our API even receives the message.

To diagnose this problem, try forcing your application/HTTP library to IPv4 connectivity, or disable IPv6 on your server completely.

• No sounds when application is open
• No sounds even when application is not open
• No sounds with Apple Watch
• Testing notifications
• Not hearing sounds on a Huawei/Xiaomi Android device

No sounds when application is open

If you're testing out Pushover for the first time, you may have the Pushover app open while you wait for the message to arrive. In this scenario, you will not hear a notification alert sound and/or feel vibration and you might think something is wrong. By default, the Pushover apps do not play sounds or vibration when the screen is on and the Pushover application is visible, because no notification is generated with the system; the message is received and displayed directly by the running Pushover application which you can see at the top of your message list.

However, this is not how you will typically interact with Pushover. Your device will either be in sleep mode or you will be interacting with another application when a notification arrives. To properly test Pushover, turn the device's screen off or switch to another application before sending your test messages. This will more accurately represent how you will use Pushover most often: to receive notifications while your device is not in use.

To modify this behavior and always generate a system notification, enable the "Play sounds in foreground" option in the app's settings menu:

No sounds even when application is not open

First, ensure that your notification volume is adjusted properly. On Android and iOS, there are separate volume controls for notifications, ringers, alarms, and media/music. When you are using the Pushover app and use your device's volume keys to turn the volume up, you may just be adjusting the volume for your phone ringer which does not affect the volume at which notifications play.

On iOS, open the device's main Settings app, then go to Sounds. There is a volume slider there to adjust the "Ringer and Alerts" volume. Make sure it is at a reasonable level. Also, verify that Pushover is allowed to generate sounds by going to the device's Settings app, then Notification Center, then Pushover, and ensure Sounds is enabled. Also note that on iPhones, the physical mute switch on the side of the phone will mute all notification sounds, so you must unmute it to hear sounds from Pushover.

On Android, open the device's main Settings app, then go to Sound, then Volumes. Adjust the "Ringtone & notifications" volume to a reasonable level.

Verify that your device is not in any Do Not Disturb mode which is silencing notifications.

No sounds with Apple Watch

Please see this article for information about notification sounds on phones with an Apple Watch paired.

Testing notifications

Once you have adjusted the notification volume properly and are not in the Pushover app (or have the screen off), you can test receiving notifications by using our dashboard from your computer to send a notification to your device with a specified sound.

If you are not hearing sound only during certain periods of time, ensure that your Quiet Hours are not in effect, and that any Do Not Disturb functionality is not enabled on your device. Also ensure that any physical mute switch on the device is not active.

Not hearing sounds on a Huawei/Xiaomi Android device

Certain Android devices such as those from Huawei and Xiaomi are known to have problems with notifications due to their non-standard Android implementations (EMUI and MIUI).

These modified versions of Android contain changes to system APIs that applications like Pushover rely on to generate notifications, which often cause notifications to behave differently than on every other Android device.

In addition to battery optimizations that must be disabled, it may be required to reactivate notification sounds by navigating through the system Settings application and activating notifications for all priorities/urgencies, and choosing particular sounds for them. Even with these changes, notification sounds may not work reliably, or may not be customizable. Please contact your device vendor for further support with notifications on these devices, as the problem is not with the Pushover app.

To test whether your default sound has been saved properly, send a message to your device from your dashboard and leave the sound setting at its default "(Device default sound)". This should trigger a notification on your device and play your device's default sound. If not, go back into the Settings and re-select your chosen sound, as it may not have saved properly on our servers.

For applications that are subscribed to, you can edit those subscription settings to override the application's default sound. You can find these subscriptions from your dashboard under "Your Subscriptions".

And finally, you can force your default sound to be played for all applications by going to the Settings menu in the Pushover app on your device, and enabling the option to force playing your default sound.

Emergency-priority Messages

Each message sent to Pushover's API can include a user-specified priority which alters how the message is handled. (Contrary to the documentation of some 3rd party software, this priority has no affect on how quickly your message is processed or delivered through Pushover.) The highest priority, emergency (2), will repeat the alert multiple times until you acknowledge it by tapping on the notification and then tapping on the "Acknowledge" button in the app. These emergency-priority messages are indicated by a bright red background in the message list, and the label "Emergency priority" under the title in the dedicated message view.

If you are receiving repeating emergency-priority messages and you do not want this repeating behavior, change the message priority in the software you use to generate Pushover notifications to use the default (0) or just high-priority (1) which will not repeat.

Duplicate Instances

For server-side software such as network monitors or cron tasks that send Pushover notifications, it may be possible that the software is running twice and sending two messages to our API each time.

If the same message appears multiple times in the message list of the Pushover app, then our API is receiving multiple messages from your software. Verify that it is not running twice on your servers (or however the messages are generated).

Multiple E-mails

For messages received through our e-mail gateway, the same situation can occur where multiple e-mails are received by our servers and converted to notifications. Verify on the sending side that multiple e-mails are not being sent out.

When the device being specified in the device parameter through our API or the device column in a delivery group does not exist, has been renamed, or has been temporarily disabled, messages being sent to that user will instead be directed to all other active devices on the user's account.

This behavior is by design so the message to the user is not lost, and to alert the user that the device being targeted is either offline or specified incorrectly so it can be updated.

If you do not receive a welcome e-mail when you initially create your Pushover account, please check your e-mail Spam folder.  If the message arrived there, please click "Not Spam" or a similar button to continue receiving e-mails from Pushover in the future.

In order for users of Hotmail/Outlook.com/Live.com to receive e-mails from Pushover, you will need to first add support@pushover.net as a "Safe Sender" on the Outlook.com site.

First, login to your Outlook.com e-mail account, then click the Settings icon in the upper right corner, then scroll down and click on Show Full Settings. Click on Junk Email, then down to Safe Senders. Add support@pushover.net and then Save.

Once you have added us as a Safe Sender, you can request a new confirmation e-mail which should hopefully arrive in your Inbox.

• Important Account Recovery Information

Pushover currently supports TOTP-based two-factor authenticaiton (2FA) for all accounts.

When logged in, visit your Settings page. Enter your current account password, check the box for "Setup Two-Factor Auth", and then click "Save Account Settings".

You'll be given instructions for the setup of two-factor authentication for your account, which includes scanning a QR code in your 2FA application (or manually entering the secret).  You will be given a list of recovery codes which you must write down and securely store somewhere.

Important Account Recovery Information

Enabling two-factor authentication on your account requires a current code from your 2FA application/device every time you log in to your Pushover account or do certain actions like change your password.

When you initially enroll in two-factor authentication, a list of recovery codes are generated which you should save (not in a password manager if you also use it for generating 2FA codes!). Each of these codes can be used in place of a current 2FA code and are single-use, so upon login or authentication, you will have to use another code.

If you lose access to your 2FA application/device and lose access to your recovery codes, we cannot recover access to your Pushover account because we cannot properly authenticate you. An account without 2FA enabled only requires a password, which can be reset by e-mail. This means that anyone with access to your e-mail account can login as you, since they could reset your password by clicking on the link sent by e-mail. Since many users enable 2FA to explicitly disable the ability for anyone to reset their password by e-mail, we will not manually reset 2FA on an account.

If you contact customer support regarding a lost 2FA application/device, your only recovery option will be to request that we delete your account so that you can create a new one with the same e-mail address. In that case, your Pushover user key will be changed and all of your application API tokens and e-mail aliases will be invalidated.  However, once you create a new account, you can restore your previous in-app purchase to add your license to your new account.