Notifications & Do Not Disturb
What breaks through, what doesn't, and how to quiet things down.
Notifications tell you when something needs you — a mention, an assignment, a meeting summary that's ready, a check-in somebody asked for. You control what gets through.
What you can be notified about
| Notification | Default |
|---|---|
| Mentions & direct messages | On |
| Being assigned work | On |
| Due-date reminders | On |
| Meeting summary ready | On |
| Checklist activity on your tasks | On |
| Status check-ins asked of you | On |
| Channel activity (unmuted channels) | On |
| Announcements | On |
| Time-off requests and decisions | On |
Everything collects in the bell, and optionally by email. Adjust each type in Settings → Notifications.
What the bell deliberately doesn't show you
- Your own actions. If you did it, you don't get told about it — including everything Autopilot or a rule did on your behalf while you were watching.
- The same thing five times. Repeats of one action within an hour collapse behind an n× count, so a single Autopilot pass is one line rather than a hundred.
- Something you've already been told. Activity that already reached you as a notification isn't shown a second time as activity.
- Anything you've already read. Read notifications never collapse — if you've seen one, a second one is new information and is shown as such.
Toasts
A new notification slides in briefly at the corner of the screen. It only ever fires for something that has actually just arrived — opening the app with a backlog doesn't storm you with a week of them.
| When | Does a toast appear? |
|---|---|
| Do Not Disturb, or a silencing status | No. |
| Overnight, in your own timezone | No. |
| Outside your working hours | Yes — deliberately. You are looking at the app, and most people have never set their hours, so suppressing on an assumed 9-to-5 would be the product guessing about you. |
Hoot's bubble
Separately from the bell, Hoot raises a one-line bubble above its launcher when it notices something — a meeting you are invited to about to start, Autopilot waiting on a project you lead, mentions you have not read, work that has gone late. It follows the same two silences as a toast (muted, and overnight in your own zone), shows one at a time and at most one every four hours — except the meeting reminder, which is exempt, because a reminder that waits for a cooldown is not one. Switch it off in Settings → Notifications. See Hoot, your assistant.
Do Not Disturb
Turn on Do Not Disturb to silence notifications for a while, or set recurring quiet hours. Setting your status to Do not disturb, Out sick or Out of office silences them too — see Presence & status.
Clearing the bell
It hides notifications, activity and prompts up to that moment. Nothing is destroyed and your activity history is intact. It deliberately does not mark unread chat as read — those messages really are unread, and pretending otherwise loses real information.
If notifications feel noisy, mute the busiest channels and keep mentions on. You'll still get pulled in when something is actually about you.