Slack
Slack Notifications Not Showing Up: How to Fix It on Desktop and Mobile
Table of Contents
Missing a Slack ping can genuinely mean missing a deadline, especially on fast-moving teams. It’s one of the most common Slack complaints, and the cause is almost always a setting rather than a bug.
The fix I forget most often, and the one I’d check first if I were you: individual channels can be muted without you realizing it, sometimes from a single accidental click weeks earlier. It’s the single most common cause I’ve run into personally.
Why Notifications Stop
Common causes include Slack’s own Do Not Disturb mode being switched on, incorrect per-channel notification settings, OS-level notification permissions being blocked, or — on mobile — battery optimization silently killing the app in the background.
How to Fix It
- Check Do Not Disturb. Click your workspace name in the top-left, and check whether Pause Notifications is currently active — it’s easy to turn this on and forget about it.
- Review your global notification preferences. Click your profile picture, then Preferences, then Notifications. Confirm “All new messages” or your preferred option is selected under “Notify me about.”
- Check individual channel settings. Open the channel, click the channel name at the top, and check Notification preferences — this is set per-channel and is the single most common cause of “missing” notifications.
- Fix OS-level permissions. On Windows or Mac, check your system notification settings and confirm Slack is allowed. On mobile, check app permissions and disable battery optimization for Slack specifically.
- Reinstall the app as a last resort. If nothing above works, fully uninstalling and reinstalling Slack resolves stuck notification tokens more often than you’d expect.
Final Thoughts
If notifications work fine in some channels but not others, it’s almost always the per-channel setting rather than anything global — check that first before assuming something bigger is broken. If absolutely nothing works after trying everything above, signing out completely and back in refreshes your entire notification session from scratch.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why do I get notifications on desktop but not mobile?
Slack deliberately suppresses mobile push notifications when it detects your desktop app is active, to avoid duplicate alerts — this is expected behavior, not a bug.
Can my workspace admin control my notifications?
Admins can set default policies for the whole workspace, but individual members can usually still customize their own notification preferences on top of that.
Why am I only missing @here or @channel mentions specifically?
Check Preferences → Notifications and make sure channel-wide mentions are enabled separately from direct messages — they’re two distinct toggles.