Common Front App Problems & How to Fix Them (2026)

Symptom → likely cause, at a glance

Before you dig in, find your symptom in the table and jump to the matching section.

1. Email sync stopped — messages aren't arriving or sending

The single most common "Front is broken" report is a channel that has quietly stopped syncing: new emails don't land in the inbox, or replies you send never leave.

The most common cause is an expired OAuth connection. Front connects to Gmail, Office 365, or your SMTP provider through an authorization token, and that token can expire or get revoked (a password change, an admin security policy, or a provider-side timeout will all do it). When it lapses, Front can no longer read or send on that channel.

The fix is to reauthorize the channel. Open Settings → Channels, select the affected channel, go to its Settings tab, and click Reauthorize to re-run the sign-in with your email provider. That single step resolves the large majority of "not syncing" cases. If sync is still broken after reauthorizing, check whether the problem is on Front's side rather than yours — Front maintains a public status page at status.frontapp.com, and per Front's status page documentation, "if at any time Front is experiencing an incident or outage where the app is not working as expected, we will post an update to our status page." Subscribe there so you find out about outages before your customers do.

For the full diagnostic — provider-specific reauth, mailbox permissions, and what to send Front support — see Front not syncing emails, and if you suspect a platform-wide outage rather than your account, is Front app down covers how to confirm it.

2. Rules stopped working

A close second: an automation that ran perfectly for months suddenly does nothing — conversations arrive untagged, unassigned, or unreplied.

The most common cause is an upstream rule with "Stop processing other rules" enabled. Rules evaluate top to bottom, and per Front's understanding rules guide, if a rule earlier in the list has that box checked, "the rules that follow will not be processed." A brand-new rule you added, or a reordered one, can silently short-circuit everything below it. The fix: open Workspace settings → Rules and macros, walk the list from the top, and check whether any rule above the broken one has stop-processing enabled — then reorder or uncheck as needed.

The second cause is rule order and conflicts. As Front's community explains in the widely-referenced rules stopped working thread, "the order of your rules matters since earlier rules can interfere with the ones that come later" — a rule at position #1 can prevent a rule at #5 from firing, and rules that depend on a tag can fail because another rule triggered first.

There are also cases where a rule structurally will never run — worth ruling out before you assume a bug. Per Front's documentation, an auto-reply will not trigger a rule with a "When outbound reply" trigger, messages imported when you first add a channel don't fire rules, and conversations in the trash won't trigger anything. For the full engine model and how to build rules that don't collide, see Front rules explained; for the step-by-step diagnostic, Front rules not working is the dedicated fix.

3. Notifications aren't coming through

If your team is missing new conversations, the cause is almost always a setting rather than a bug.

The most common cause is a notification level set too low. Per Front's notification settings guide, each surface — Desktop, Mobile, and Email — has its own level: All, Smart, or No notifications. If Desktop is on "Smart" you'll only be pinged for conversations Front thinks are relevant to you, and if it's on "No notifications" you'll get nothing. Open Settings → Me → Notifications and set the levels you actually want per surface.

The second cause is that browser notifications were never enabled. On desktop web, Front needs explicit permission to show system notifications; if the "Enable browser notifications" button is greyed out or was dismissed, no pop-ups appear no matter your level. Enable it in the same panel and accept the browser's permission prompt.

Note one honest change: Front deprecated the legacy notification center ahead of the redesign and does not plan to bring it back, favouring a single "Open" view instead — so if you're hunting for that old panel, it's gone by design, not broken. The dedicated walk-through, including operating-system background limits, is Front notifications not working. A related symptom — conversations you closed popping back open — is a channel-setting issue covered in Front emails reopening fix.

4. The mobile app is silent or won't load

Front's mobile app gets its own cluster of reports: no push notifications, blank loading, or the app closing itself in the background.

The most common cause is an operating-system background restriction. Both iOS and Android aggressively suspend backgrounded apps to save battery, and when they do, push delivery stalls. The fix lives in your phone's settings, not Front's: enable Background App Refresh (iOS) or disable battery optimization for Front (Android), and confirm notification permission is granted to the app at the OS level.

The second cause is simply an outdated build. Front ships fixes frequently, and a stale app version can drop notifications or fail to render. Update Front from the App Store or Play Store, and if it's still misbehaving, sign out, delete, and reinstall to force a clean sync. Per Front's mobile app documentation, the redesigned mobile app also changed how notification actions behave, so re-checking your mobile notification level after an update is worth doing. The full checklist is in Front mobile app problems.

5. The New Front redesign feels slower

Not a bug, but the most emotionally-charged item on this list: the rolled-out "New Front" interface changed navigation, and a vocal set of users find it slower. This one has no settings toggle — it's a design change — but it's worth naming honestly.

The most-cited complaints in Front's own New Front update opinions community thread are concrete: search was moved into a popover so it takes an extra step, common actions like tagging now take "multiple clicks for nearly every operation that used to be one click," and dark mode lost contrast to the point one user described it as "black subject > black staff name," making unread and assignment visibility harder. Despite the friction, Front still rates 4.7 stars across more than 2,400 reviews on G2, so the redesign is a workflow-adjustment cost rather than a broken product.

What you can do: re-learn the new keyboard shortcuts (they claw back most of the lost clicks), switch to light mode if dark-mode legibility is the pain point, and file specific feedback in the community thread — Front has said it's iterating on the rollout. There's no way to revert to the old UI once it's rolled out to your workspace, so this is the one item here where the honest answer is "adapt and configure," not "flip a setting."

Where an AI layer quietly shrinks this list

Most of the problems above are configuration issues — but a chunk of the volume behind them is just work piling up faster than a shared inbox can clear it. When every conversation needs a human to open, read, and reply, a slow notification or a stalled rule turns into a visible backlog. An AI agent layer changes that math by resolving the routine tickets before they queue.

The broader category of AI agents for customer service exists for exactly this. Macha is one such layer: it runs on top of the Front you already use through the live Macha–Front connector — it doesn't replace Front, your channels, or your rules. Your inbox keeps routing and tagging; Macha's agent reads the routed conversation, understands intent rather than keywords, and drafts or sends a grounded reply, pulling real order or account data through a custom tool that turns your API into something the agent can call. Fewer manual touches means a missed notification or a stopped rule affects far fewer live conversations. Macha's credits are consumed per AI action, never per resolution, and for how inboxes and automation fit together as a system, the Front shared inbox model is the place to start.

FAQ

Why did my Front rules suddenly stop working? The most common cause is a rule earlier in the list with "Stop processing other rules" enabled, which skips every matching rule below it. Check rule order under Workspace settings → Rules and macros, and confirm no upstream rule is short-circuiting the one that broke. Also rule out structural cases where rules never run — such as messages imported when a channel is first added, or conversations in the trash.

How do I fix Front not syncing my emails? Reauthorize the affected channel under Settings → Channels → your channel → Settings → Reauthorize to refresh its OAuth connection, which resolves most sync failures. If it persists, check status.frontapp.com to rule out a Front-side outage.

Why am I not getting Front notifications? Check your notification levels under Settings → Me → Notifications — each of Desktop, Mobile, and Email has an All / Smart / No-notifications setting, and "Smart" or "No notifications" will suppress pings. Also enable browser notifications and, on mobile, allow background refresh at the operating-system level.

Can I go back to the old Front design? No — once the New Front interface rolls out to a workspace there's no revert toggle. Users mitigate the extra clicks by learning the new keyboard shortcuts and switching to light mode for better contrast, and Front says it's iterating on the rollout based on community feedback.

Can I reduce these problems by adding AI to Front? Adding an AI agent layer like Macha doesn't fix the settings issues, but it resolves routine tickets automatically on top of Front, so fewer live conversations are affected when a rule stalls or a notification is missed. It connects to Front as a live connector without replacing your inboxes or rules.

Tired of Front problems turning into backlogs? Start a free trial of Macha and connect it to your Front in minutes.