Introduction

The mobile_app notify platform accepts the standard title, message and target parameters used by the notify platform. The mobile_app notify platform supports targets as services. As long as you granted notifications permissions during setup, you will find all your devices listed as targets for the notify service with names prefixed notify.mobile_app_ followed by the Device ID of you device. This can be checked in the App Configuration menu of the sidebar and defaults to the name specified in the General>About within the iOS/macOS settings app or under About>Phone in Android settings (with spaces and non alphanumeric characters replaced by underscores). A requirement of the notify platform is that you must specify at least message: in your payload. A minimum working example of a notification is:

automation:  - alias: 'Send Notification'    trigger:      ...    action:      - service: notify.mobile_app_<your_device_id_here>        data:          message: "Notification text"

The mobile_app platform provides many enhancements to the simple notification generated above. The image below, for example, shows an iOS actionable notification allowing you to trigger different automations from each button. A push notification showing all of the basic options `title` and `message` as well as `subtitle` and actions.

Sending notifications to multiple devices#

To send notifications to multiple devices, create a notification group:

notify:  - name: ALL_DEVICES    platform: group    services:      - service: mobile_app_iphone_one      - service: mobile_app_iphone_two      - service: mobile_app_ipad_one      - service: mobile_app_pixel_4_xl

Now, you can send notifications to everyone in the group using:

  automation:    - alias: "Notify Mobile app group"      trigger:        ...      action:        - service: notify.ALL_DEVICES          data:            message: "Something happened at home!"

General Options#

Attachments#

You can attach media and other content to notifications. See Attachments.

Opening a URL#

When tapping on a notification, you can choose to open a URL, which can fall into one of the following buckets:

A relative URL to your Home Assistant instance, like /lovelace/test.
An full URL like https://example.com
For a particular action in Actionable Notifications, see its documentation.
An application using app://<package name> where <package name> is replaced with the actual package you wish to open.
The More Info panel of an entity using entityId:<entity_ID> where <entity_id> is replaced with the entity ID you wish to view. Ex: entityId:sun.sun.

For relative URLs, you can open a lovelace view in the format /lovelace/test where test is replaced by your defined path in the defined view or a lovelace dashboard in the format /lovelace-dashboard/view where /lovelace-dashboard/ is replaced by your defined dashboard URL and view is replaced by the defined path within that dashboard.

automation:  - alias: "Notify of Motion click action"    trigger:      ...    action:      - service: notify.mobile_app_<your_device_id_here>        data:          title: "Motion Detected in Backyard"          message: "Someone might be in the backyard."          data:            # iOS URL            url: "https://google.com"            # Android URL            clickAction: "https://google.com"

automation:  - alias: "Send Notification with a link"    trigger:      ...    action:      - service: notify.mobile_app_<your_device_id_here>        data:          title: "Motion Detected in Backyard"          message: "Someone might be in the backyard."          data:            # iOS URL            url: "/lovelace/cameras"            # Android URL            clickAction: "/lovelace/cameras"

Grouping#

Combine notifications together visually.

iOS does not support grouping critical notifications.

automation:  - alias: "Notify Mobile app grouping"    trigger:      ...    action:      - service: notify.mobile_app_<your_device_id_here>        data:          title: "Smart Home Alerts"          message: "Something happened at home!"          data:            group: "example-notification-group"

Replacing#

Replace an existing notification by using a tag for the notification. All subsequent notifications will take the place of a notification with the same tag.

iOS does not support replacing critical notifications.

automation:  - alias: "Notify of Motion iOS replacement"    trigger:      ...    action:      - service: notify.mobile_app_<your_device_id_here>        data:          title: "Motion Detected in Backyard"          message: "Someone might be in the backyard."          data:            tag: "backyard-motion-detected"

Clearing#

Version Requirement

Clearing a notification on iOS requires app version 2021.5 or later.

You can clear an existing notification which has a tag by sending clear_notification.

iOS will only clear the most recent critical notification from a given tag.

automation:  - alias: "Notify of Motion clear notification"    trigger:      ...    action:      - service: notify.mobile_app_<your_device_id_here>        data:          message: "clear_notification"          data:            tag: "backyard-motion-detected"

Subtitle / Subject#

Subtitles and subjects are secondary headings you can use in your notifications beyond the title property.

iOS macOS
A subtitle displays in addition to title and message.

Android
A subject may take the place of longer content (more than 6 lines), depending on your device.

automation:  - alias: "Notify Mobile app subtitle"    trigger:      ...    action:      - service: notify.mobile_app_<your_device_id_here>        data:          title: "Smart Home Alerts"          message: "Something happened at home!"          data:            # iOS example            subtitle: "Subtitle goes here"            # Android example            subject: "Subject for long text"

Android Specific#

Notification Color#

In Android you can set the color of the notification, you can use either the color name or the hex code.

automation:  - alias: "Notify of Motion color"    trigger:      ...    action:      - service: notify.mobile_app_<your_device_id_here>        data:          title: "Motion Detected in Backyard"          message: "Someone might be in the backyard."          data:            color: "#2DF56D" # or "red"

Sticky Notification#

You can set whether to dismiss the notification upon selecting it or not. Setting sticky to 'true' will keep the notification from being dismissed when the user selects it. Setting it to 'false' (default) will dismiss the notification upon selecting it.

automation:  - alias: "Notify of Motion sticky"    trigger:      ...    action:      - service: notify.mobile_app_<your_device_id_here>        data:          title: "Motion Detected in Backyard"          message: "Someone might be in the backyard."          data:            sticky: "true" # or "false"

Notification Channels#

Notification channels allows users to separate their notifications easily (i.e. alarm vs laundry) so they can customize aspects like what type of sound is made and a lot of other device specific features. Devices running Android 8.0+ are able to create and manage notification channels on the fly using automations. Once a channel is created you can navigate to your notification settings and you will find the newly created channel, from there you can customize the behavior based on what your device allows.

Creating a channel#

In order to create a notification you will need to specify the channel you wish to use. By default all notifications use General if channel is not defined.

In the example below a new channel will be created with the name Motion:

automation:  - alias: "Notify of Motion channel"    trigger:      ...    action:      - service: notify.mobile_app_<your_device_id_here>        data:          title: "Motion Detected in Backyard"          message: "Someone might be in the backyard."          data:            channel: "Motion" # Name of the channel you wish to create or utilize

Default values for a channel if not provided will be as follows:

Importance: Default which means Default notification importance: shows everywhere, makes noise, but does not visually intrude.
Vibration Pattern: Vibration disabled
LED Color: LED disabled

Removing a channel#

If you wish to remove a channel you will need to send message: remove_channel with the channel you wish to remove. Removing a channel doesn't reset the settings to the default values, it just removes it from the notification channels list. If you send a notification to a removed channel, it will restore it. The only way to really remove a channel is by clearing the app data which will remove everything.

Depending on when you installed the app you may want to send remove_channel to channel: default to clean up the old default channel:

automation:  - alias: Removing Motion channel    trigger:      ...    action:      - service: notify.mobile_app_<your_device_id_here>        data:          message: "remove_channel"          data:            channel: "Motion" # Name of the channel you wish to remove

Specific channel properties#

info

If your device is on Android 8.0+ the following properties will become the default for the channel the first time they are set:

vibrationPattern
ledColor
importance

These options will be ignored once they are set for a particular channel, only lowering of the importance will work (if the user has not already modified this).

Devices running Android 5.0-7.1.2 do not have channels and do not need to worry about this note.

Notification Channel Importance#

When you are setting the channel for your notification you also have the option to set the importance for the channel per notification. Possible values for this property are high, low, max, min and default. To learn more about what each value does see the FCM docs. For devices before Android 8.0 this property can be used like priority with the same options described up above.

See Specific channel properties for important behavior of this property.

automation:  - alias: "Notify of Motion channel importance"    trigger:      ...    action:      - service: notify.mobile_app_<your_device_id_here>        data:          message: "Motion Detected"          data:            channel: "Motion" # For devices on Android 8.0+ only            importance: high

Notification Vibration Pattern#

You can set the vibration pattern for the channel by setting the vibrationPattern property. Possible values are a list of numbers. eg. "100, 1000, 100, 1000, 100" etc.. The pattern specification is "off time, on time, off time, on time, off time" etc.

See Specific channel properties for important behavior of this property.

automation:  - alias: "Notify of Motion vibration"    trigger:      ...    action:      - service: notify.mobile_app_<your_device_id_here>        data:          message: "Motion Detected"          data:            vibrationPattern: "100, 1000, 100, 1000, 100" # The pattern you wish to set for vibrations            channel: "Motion" # For devices on Android 8.0+ only

Notification LED Color#

Some Android devices have a multi-color notification LED. By setting the ledColor property you can control what color the LED will flash. Possible values are the same as for property color eg '#2DF56D' # or 'red'.

See Specific channel properties for important behavior of this property.

automation:  - alias: "Notify of Motion LED color"    trigger:      ...    action:      - service: notify.mobile_app_<your_device_id_here>        data:          message: Motion detected          data:            ledColor: "red" # Set the LED to red            channel: "Motion" # For devices on Android 8.0+ only

Persistent Notification#

Persistent notifications are notifications that cannot be dimissed by swiping away. These are useful if you have something important like an alarm being triggered. In order to use this property you must set the tag property as well. The persistent property only takes boolean (true/false) values, with false being the default. The persistent notification will still be dismissed once selected, to avoid this use sticky: true so the notification stays.

In the example below we will create a notification and then later on we will remove it.

automation:  - alias: "Notify of Motion persistent"    trigger:      ...    action:      - service: notify.mobile_app_<your_device_id_here>        data:          message: "Motion detected"          data:            persistent: true # Set to true to create a persistent notification            tag: "persistent" # Tag is required for the persistent notification

To remove the persistent notification we send clear_notification to the tag that we defined.

automation:  - alias: "Notify of Motion persistent remove"    trigger:      ...    action:      - service: notify.mobile_app_<your_device_id_here>        data:          message: "clear_notification"          data:            tag: "persistent" # The tag for the persistent notification you wish to clear

Notification Timeout#

You can set how long a notification will be shown on a users device before being removed/dismissed automatically. You may use the timeout property along with the value in seconds to achieve this.

automation:  - alias: "Notify of Motion timeout"    trigger:      ...    action:      - service: notify.mobile_app_<your_device_id_here>        data:          message: "Motion Detected"          data:            timeout: 600 # How many seconds the notification should be received by the device

Notification Message HTML Formatting#

You can add some custom HTML tags to the message of your notification.

automation:  - alias: "Notify of Motion HTML"    trigger:      ...    action:      - service: notify.mobile_app_<your_device_id_here>        data:          message: >            This is a <b><span style="color: red">HTML</span></b> <i>text</i><br><br>This is a text after a new line          title: "Cool HTML formatting"

Notification Icon#

You can set the icon for a notification by providing the icon_url. The URL provided must be either publicly accessible or can be a relative path (i.e. /local/icon/icon.png), more details can be found in attachments. It is important to note that if you set the image then Android will not show the icon for the notification, the image will be shown in its place. So the message will be shown with the image and with the image as the icon.

automation:  - alias: "Notify of Motion icon"    trigger:      ...    action:      - service: notify.mobile_app_<your_device_id_here>        data:          message: "Motion Detected"          data:            icon_url: "https://github.com/home-assistant/home-assistant-assets/blob/master/logo-round-192x192.png?raw=true"

Text To Speech Notifications#

Instead of posting a notification on the device you can instead get your device to speak the notification. This notification works different than the others. You will set message: TTS and the actual text to speak would be in the title. Current support is limited to the current Text To Speech locale set on the device. If there is an error processing the message you will see a toast message appear on the device. Check to make sure that the Google Text To Speech engine is up to date and set as the default, in case you run into any issues.

automation:  - alias: Notify of Motion TTS    trigger:      ...    action:      - service: notify.mobile_app_<your_device_id_here>        data:          message: "TTS"          title: "Motion has been detected"

By default Text To Speech notifications use the music stream so they will bypass the ringer mode on the device as long as the device's volume is not set to 0. You have the option of using channel: alarm_stream to have your notification spoken regardless of music volume.

automation:  - alias: "Notify of Motion TTS alarm"    trigger:      ...    action:      - service: notify.mobile_app_<your_device_id_here>        data:          message: TTS          title: "Motion has been detected"          data:            channel: "alarm_stream"

If you find that your alarm stream volume is too low you can use channel: alarm_stream_max which will temporarily set the alarm stream volume to the max level, play the notification and then revert back to the original volume level.

automation:  - alias: "Notify Alarm Triggered"    trigger:      ...    action:      - service: notify.mobile_app_<your_device_id_here>        data:          message: "TTS"          title: "Alarm has been triggered"          data:            channel: "alarm_stream_max"

You may not want the TTS notification to be spoken in certain situations (e.g. if the Ringer mode is not normal or DND is enabled). This can be done by adding a condition in your automation that checks the state of other sensors. Few examples are presented below:

automation:  - alias: "Notify of Motion with conditions"    trigger:      ...    condition:      - condition: state        entity_id: sensor.<your_device_id_here>_ringer_mode # Only speak if the Ringer is normal (not vibrate or silent)        state: normal      - condition: state        entity_id: sensor.<your_device_id_here>_do_not_disturb_sensor # Only speak if DND is not enabled        state: 'off'      - condition: state        entity_id: sensor.<your_device_id_here>_audio_mode # Only speak if the phone is idle (not ringing or in a call)        state: normal      - condition: state        entity_id: sensor.<your_device_id_here>_is_music_active # Only speak if the phone is not playing music        state: 'off'    action:      - service: notify.mobile_app_<your_device_id_here>        data:          message: TTS          title: Motion has been detected

Chronometer Notifications#

You can create notifications with a count up/down timer (chronometer) by passing the chronometer and when options. This feature requires at least Android 7.0.

Do note that the notification will not disappear when the timer reaches 0. Instead, it will continue decrementing into negative values. You may want to utilize notification timeouts or replace the notification when the timer hits zero.

chronometer - true to enable chronometer mode
when - the timestamp to count up or down to (seconds since 01/01/1970)

automation:  - alias: Notify of Next Alarm Time    trigger:      ...    action:      - service: notify.mobile_app_<your_device_id_here>        data:          title: "Next Alarm"          message: >-            Next Alarm At {{ states('sensor.<your_device_id_here>_next_alarm') }}          data:            chronometer: true            when: "1609459200"

Alert Once#

Android BETA

On Android you have the option for making a notification only alert once on the device. This means it will only make a sound, vibrate and/or flash the LED once. Although it is not an Android requirement this feature will not appear to function if you do not have a tag set. This setting is set to false by default as each and every notification will alert the user. This feature makes use of the Alert Once API

  - alias: Notify one time    trigger:      ...    action:      - service: notify.mobile_app_<your_device_id_here>        data:          title: "One Time"          message: "This will only alert me the first time"          data:            tag: "Alarm"            alert_once: true

iOS/macOS Specific#

Sounds#

By default the default notification sound (Tri-tone on iOS) will be played upon receiving a notification. See the Sounds documentation for details of the available sounds and how to add custom sounds. The default notification sounds (Tri-tone) can be disabled by setting sound to none in the data payload:

automation:  - alias: Make some noise    trigger:      ...    action:      - service: notify.mobile_app_<your_device_id_here>        data:          message: "Ding-dong"          data:            push:              sound: none

Badge#

You can set the app icon badge in the payload. The below example will make the app icon badge say 5:

automation:  - alias: "Notify Mobile app update badge"    trigger:      ...    action:      - service: notify.mobile_app_<your_device_id_here>        data:          title: "Smart Home Alerts"          message: "Something happened at home!"          data:            push:              badge: 5

By setting the message to delete_alert you can silently update the app badge icon in the background without sending a notification to your phone.

iOS 2021.7 will automatically reset the badge to 0 when launching the app. You can control this behavior in App Configuration > Notifications.

Interruption Level#

On iOS 15, you can set the interruption level of a notification, which has the following types:

Value	Description	Overrides Focus
`passive`	Quiet notifications without waking screen	No
`active`	Default behavior	No
`time-sensitive`	Important notifications	Yes
`critical`	Critical notifications	Yes, even mute

Requirement

time-sensitive requires an app update for iOS 15 coming out later this year.

You can read more about these levels in the Apple documentation.

This level is set in the payload. The below example delivers a passive notification:

automation:  - alias: "Notify Mobile app banana status"    trigger:      ...    action:      - service: notify.mobile_app_<your_device_id_here>        data:          title: "Banana Status Update"          message: "The bananas are ripe."          data:            push:              interruption-level: passive

Presentation Options#

By default, if the app is open (in the foreground) when a notification arrives, it will display the same as when the app is not active (in the background), with a visual alert showing notification contents, a badge update (if one was sent in the notification) and the sound of your choice. You can control how a notification is displayed when the app is in the foreground by setting the presentation_options string array. Allowed values are alert, badge and sound.

automation:  - alias: "Notify Mobile app presentation"    trigger:      ...    action:      - service: notify.ALL_DEVICES        data:          message: "Something happened at home!"          data:            presentation_options:              - alert              - badge

Performing a Shortcut#

You can perform a Shortcut when launching for a notification and have an event fire from the results. See Siri Shortcuts documentation.