Front Notifications Not Working (Desktop & Mobile): Fixes

Symptom → likely cause

1. Check your status: Out of office or muted

The single most common reason Front goes silent is your availability status. Per Front's guide to changing your notification settings, you will not receive any notifications while your status is set to Out of office, or while the Mute notifications setting is toggled on. Both are easy to leave on by accident — you flip OOO for a meeting, or mute during focus time, and forget.

Fix: click your avatar (or the status control) at the top of Front and confirm you're set to Available or Busy, not Out of office. Then open the gear icon → Me settings → Notifications and make sure Mute notifications is off. This clears the majority of "notifications not working" reports before you touch anything else.

2. Confirm the basic level isn't set to "No notifications"

Front has three notification levels, and one of them turns the channel off entirely. In gear icon → Me settings → Notifications, each channel — Desktop, Mobile, and Email — can be set independently to All notifications, Smart notifications, or No notifications (Front help).

• All notifications alerts you on essentially everything in your inboxes.
• Smart notifications is the popular default for new customers: it notifies you on the things that usually matter — conversations assigned to you, @mentions, comments, snoozed conversations reopening, and rule-based alerts — but stays quiet on the rest.
• No notifications silences that channel completely.

If a channel is set to No notifications, that's your answer for that channel. If you're set to Smart and expecting to hear about every new message in a shared inbox, that's the mismatch — Smart intentionally won't ping you for conversations that aren't yours or don't mention you. Bump the channel to All if you genuinely want everything, or keep Smart and lean on the per-inbox rules in step 6.

3. Delayed, not missing: the built-in 20s / 30s delay

If notifications arrive but land a little late, that's usually Front working exactly as designed. Front deliberately staggers delivery so it doesn't buzz your phone or fill your inbox for something you're already handling at your desk. Per the notification settings documentation:

• Desktop notifications are sent immediately.
• Mobile notifications are delayed by 20 seconds, and only sent if the message still hasn't been seen.
• Email notifications are delayed by 30 seconds, and only sent if the message still hasn't been seen.

So the mobile and email delay isn't a bug — it's a "did anyone catch this yet?" grace period. It also explains a common shared-inbox surprise: if a teammate opens the conversation within those windows, your phone or email notification is suppressed on purpose. If you only want the immediate channel, keep Desktop on and dial Mobile/Email down. If a delay stretches to many minutes instead of seconds, that's a different problem — check whether Front itself is having an incident (see is Front app down) before assuming a settings fault.

4. Browser notifications blocked (the greyed-out button)

If desktop alerts work in the Front app but not in your browser, your browser is blocking them. In the web app, the Enable browser notifications button appears greyed out when notifications are blocked at the browser level (Front help) — you can see exactly that disabled button in the settings screenshot above.

Fix: in your browser (Chrome, Edge, Safari, Firefox), open the site permissions for your Front URL and set Notifications to Allow, then reload the Front tab. In Chrome, that's the padlock/site-info icon in the address bar → Site settings → Notifications → Allow. Once the browser permission is granted and you refresh, the Enable browser notifications button becomes active and desktop pop-ups start working. Operating-system-level Do Not Disturb or Focus modes can also swallow these — worth a glance if the browser permission is already set to Allow.

5. Mobile push: set it from desktop or web, not the phone

Front's mobile push notifications are configured from the desktop or web app, not inside the phone app itself. To choose which push notifications reach your device, open the desktop or web app → gear icon → Me settings → Notifications, and under Mobile pick All, Smart, or No notifications (Front help). If Mobile is set to No notifications there, no amount of poking at the phone will fix it.

Two honest add-ons that live on the device, not in Front's settings: the Front mobile app needs the operating system's notification permission granted (iOS/Android Settings → Front → Notifications → Allow), and background App Refresh / battery-optimisation settings on the phone can delay or drop push delivery. Grant the OS permission, disable aggressive battery optimisation for Front, and confirm the Mobile level is All or Smart.

6. Advanced (per-inbox) notification rules overriding the basics

If only some inboxes or conversations notify you, an advanced notification rule is doing its job — or getting in the way. Below the basic levels, Front's Advanced notifications section lets you write per-inbox rules: notify me on All for the VIP inbox, but stay quiet on the archive inbox, for example. In a Front community thread on per-inbox customization, Front's support team confirms you can "create notifications for specific inboxes" using exactly this Advanced notifications feature.

The catch: a more specific advanced rule overrides your basic level for that inbox. So if you set Desktop to All but expect pings from an inbox that an advanced rule has muted, the rule wins. Fix: open gear icon → Me → Notifications → Advanced, review each rule, and either adjust or remove the one that's silencing the inbox you care about. This is the right lever for a shared inbox where you only want to hear about the queues you actually own — see Front shared inbox explained for how those inboxes are structured. Note these are personal notification rules, distinct from workspace automation (Front rules explained covers the routing engine).

7. "Where did the notification center go?" — New Front

If you upgraded to New Front and lost the top-bar notification view, that view was removed — it isn't a setting you can toggle back on. The legacy notification center (the old lightning-bolt-style top-bar list of notifications) was retired in the New Front interface. Front's stated design philosophy is that you work from a single place — the Open view of your inbox — so that nothing slips through the cracks, and the company has indicated the standalone notification center isn't planned to return.

What to do instead: use the Open and assigned views as your live queue, and rely on the Desktop/Mobile/Email notification levels above plus per-inbox advanced rules to surface what matters. It's a genuine workflow change rather than a bug, so if you're hunting for a hidden toggle to restore the old panel, you can stop looking — the fix is adapting the workflow, not flipping a switch. If Front pages or panels are failing to load entirely (not just the notification view), that's an availability question — is Front app down covers how to check.

Reducing the notifications behind the noise

Even perfectly tuned, notifications are a triage problem: every ping is a conversation waiting for a human. The most durable fix isn't a quieter inbox — it's fewer conversations that need you in the first place.

That's the seam an AI agent layer fills. The broader category of AI agents for customer service exists to resolve routine conversations before they ever become an alert on your phone. 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 shared inboxes, or your notification settings. Macha's agent reads each incoming conversation, understands intent, and drafts or sends a grounded reply — pulling a real order or account status through a custom tool that turns your REST API into something the agent can call. The conversations it resolves never reach your notification queue at all, and the ones it escalates arrive with context attached. Macha's credits are consumed per AI action, never per resolution, so you pay for the work done — not for every alert avoided.

FAQ

Why are my Front notifications delayed? On mobile and email, that delay is intentional. Front sends desktop notifications immediately, but delays mobile by 20 seconds and email by 30 seconds — and only sends them if the message still hasn't been seen. In a shared inbox, a teammate opening the conversation inside that window suppresses your later notification on purpose.

Why is the "Enable browser notifications" button greyed out? Because your browser is blocking notifications for Front. Open your browser's site permissions for the Front URL, set Notifications to Allow, and reload the Front tab. The button then becomes active and desktop pop-ups start working.

Why am I only notified about some conversations? Either your channel is set to Smart notifications (which only pings you for assignments, @mentions, and similar — not every message), or an advanced per-inbox rule is filtering them. Switch to All notifications for everything, or review gear icon → Me → Notifications → Advanced.

How do I get Front mobile push notifications? Configure them from the desktop or web app: gear icon → Me settings → Notifications → Mobile, and choose All or Smart. Also grant the Front app the operating system's notification permission on your phone and disable aggressive battery optimisation for it.

Can I get the old Front notification center / lightning-bolt view back? No. That top-bar notification center was removed in New Front and isn't planned to return; Front's design directs you to work from the Open view. Use the notification levels and per-inbox advanced rules to surface what matters instead.

Want fewer notifications to triage in the first place? Start a free trial of Macha and connect it to your Front in minutes.