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Home Assistant notifications that reach the right person

One notify group per resident, titles that start with the device, and a tap that opens the right popup. How to keep notifications useful.

Published
Reading time
3 min read
Level
Beginner
Tested on HA
2026.10
Lees in het Nederlands

There is a moment where your smart home tips over from helpful to annoying, and it is the moment you start swiping notifications away without reading them. After that you also miss the one that mattered. A handful of conventions keeps that from happening.

One notify group per person

If you have several phones or a tablet, create a notify group per person that reaches all of their devices:

notify:
  - name: bewoner
    platform: group
    services:
      - action: mobile_app_telefoon
      - action: mobile_app_tablet

Your automations then send to notify.bewoner and never to an individual phone. Buy a new handset and you edit one group instead of forty automations.

For messages that concern everyone, add a notify.huishouden group that bundles every resident's group.

Titles: device first

"Washing machine: the laundry is done" scans better than "The laundry is done!". Always start your title with the device or the room, because in a stack of six notifications on your lock screen you only read the first two words.

A tap has to lead somewhere

Pass a url (iOS) and a clickAction (Android) pointing at the dashboard and the popup for that device. A tap on the notification then takes you straight to the controls, rather than to your home screen where you start hunting yourself.

Five levels

Use fixed levels with fixed colours across notifications, banners and your dashboard inbox:

Level Use
info (blue) For your information
success (green) Something finished
warning (orange) Action needed, not urgent
danger (red) Action needed now
default (grey) Everything else

Errors do not belong on your phone

When an automation fails, "everything off" on departure for instance, do not push about it. Put an item in your dashboard inbox with a button that opens the logs. You want to know, but not at half past ten in the morning, because there is nothing you can do about it right then.

No debug noise

Test notifications and debug messages do not belong on your phone, and certainly not in a chat channel. Write them to the logbook with logbook.log, where they sit neatly in the timeline of the entity they belong to.

Frequently asked questions

Can I make notifications silent for one person? Yes. Use interruption-level: passive on iOS, or a dedicated low-priority channel on Android. The notification arrives without a sound.

How do I avoid duplicates on phone and tablet? Only put the devices where you actually want to see the notification in the group. A wall tablet usually does not belong in a personal group, because nobody reads it there.

What if I would rather batch notifications? Use an inbox or a briefing on demand. A practical example of a notification that works well is the washing machine.

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