> The bell in the header tells you when someone else did something to your things. It is deliberately narrow: only events involving another person appear, so your own uploads…
> Source: https://zedensix.com/penombre/docs/notifications · Site index: https://zedensix.com/llms.txt

# Notifications

The bell in the header tells you when someone else did something to your things.
It is deliberately narrow: only events involving another person appear, so your
own uploads, renames and deletions never ring it. Those are in
[your activity log](https://zedensix.com/penombre/docs/admin) instead.

## What raises one

| Event                            | Who is told                                |
| -------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------ |
| **A note is left on a file**     | Its owner, and everyone else in the thread |
| **Something is shared with you** | Each person newly given access             |
| **Everyone signed a document**   | Whoever asked for the signatures           |
| **Someone declined to sign**     | Whoever asked for the signatures           |
| **You are asked to sign**        | A signer whose account was asked           |
| **Files arrive through a link**  | Whoever made the upload link               |

The signature rows come from [signature requests](https://zedensix.com/penombre/docs/signatures). Two rules
apply to all of them:

- **You are never told about your own action.** Leaving a note on your own file
  rings nobody's bell, including yours.
- **Nobody is told twice about one event.** An owner who has also written in a
  note thread hears about a new note once, and re-sharing something with
  somebody who already has it is silent.

An upload link is batched rather than rung per file: uploads through one link
are counted, and a single notification goes out once nobody has uploaded through
it for two minutes, or ten minutes after the first file of a drop that never
pauses. It names the folder and how many files arrived. A batch is held in
memory, so restarting the server mid-drop loses that one notification; the files
themselves are already saved. The link's creator uploading through their own
link, signed in, rings nothing.

## Reading them

The bell shows a count of unread notifications. Opening it lists the most recent
thirty, newest first; clicking one marks it read and goes to the item —
`/view/<id>` for a note, **Shared with me** for a share. **Mark all as read**
clears the count without opening anything.

The list is fetched when the page loads and refreshed once a minute. There is no
live push channel, so a notification can be up to a minute old when it appears —
a deliberate trade, since pushing would mean running a pub/sub that a
single-container install does not otherwise need.

## Choosing where they reach you

**Settings → General → Notifications** has one row per kind of notification and
one column per place it can reach you:

| Place         | What it means                                          |
| ------------- | ------------------------------------------------------ |
| In the app    | The bell, on the web and in the mobile app             |
| By email      | A copy by mail, when the server can send mail          |
| On your phone | The mobile app's own notifications, while it is closed |

The same grid is in the mobile app, under **Settings → General**, and a change
in one shows in the other.

Out of the box every kind rings the bell and reaches your phone. Something
shared with you, files uploaded through your links, and the outcome of a
signature request you made, are emailed too, since they are addressed to you by
name; comments and notes are not emailed unless you turn that on, and neither is
a request to sign, whose link already comes by email. Turning **In the app** off
for a kind also stops it reaching your phone: the app finds new notifications by
asking the server for the ones the bell keeps.

**By email** is disabled, with a note saying so, unless an administrator has
configured outgoing mail — see the SMTP section of [Environment](https://zedensix.com/penombre/docs/env). If
mail is removed afterwards the choices stay set but nothing is sent, rather than
failing quietly in a way that looks like lost notifications.

A failed email never affects the action that caused it: the notification is
recorded, the bell still rings, and the mail failure is logged.

## Notes on behaviour

- **Notifications are per person, not per drive.** In
  [simple mode](https://zedensix.com/penombre/docs/simple-mode) everyone shares one drive but each account keeps
  its own bell, so a note left on the shared drive reaches the drive's owner
  rather than everybody.
- **They outlive the people in them.** The actor's name is stored as it read
  when the event happened, so deleting an account does not blank out the history
  of what it did.
- **Deleting an account removes that account's own notifications.** They are
  addressed to it and mean nothing without it.