Notifications and sounds

Everything The Margin needs to tell you goes to the bell at the top of the screen. Push and sound don't add anything to it. They only decide whether the bell can reach you with the app closed, and how much noise it makes while the app is open. Both are set in Settings→Notifications.

The bell#

The bell is your inbox. Some of what lands there:

• something shared with you, or an invitation to a workspace, and the answer to an invitation you sent
• chores waiting for your approval, and pocket money that has been paid
• who is cooking tonight, and a shopping list the meal plan has filled
• a question an assistant has raised in an agent pact
• reminders that a trial is about to end
• chat messages and mentions (see Chat)

It reads from the copy of your data on the device, so it opens offline, and anything you mark read while offline syncs when you reconnect. Press a row to open what it is about. Mark all read clears the badge in one go and offers an Undo, which puts the same ones back to unread.

One inbox for every workspace#

You have one bell, not one per workspace. The badge counts everything unread across all your workspaces, so a decision waiting in a team workspace still reaches you while you are working in your personal one.

A row from a workspace other than the one you are in says which workspace it came from, and the top of the list tells you how many unread rows came from elsewhere. When you open one of those rows, The Margin switches to its workspace first and then opens the item, so the link always lands where the item lives.

Push notifications#

Push sends a notification to your phone or computer even when The Margin is closed. It carries the same things as the bell.

Turn it on with Notify this device in Settings→Notifications. You do this once on each device, because the permission to interrupt you belongs to that phone or browser, not to your account. Turning it on in one place leaves your other devices as they were.

• If you belong to more than one workspace, the notification's title starts with the workspace's name. Tapping it opens The Margin in that workspace.
• Tapping a notification reuses a tab you already have open.
• Nothing pops up while The Margin is open in front of you, because the bell and the sound have already told you.
• Several notifications about the same thing collapse into one, so a busy thread does not stack up banners.
• Muting a chat thread mutes its push notifications too.

Once push is on, Send a test sends one real notification by the same route as everything else. It goes to every device you have turned on and takes a few seconds to arrive.

Push on an iPhone or iPad, from the browser

1. Open themarginapp.com in Safari and tap the share button (at the bottom of the screen on an iPhone, at the top on an iPad).
2. Choose Add to Home Screen.
3. Open The Margin from the new icon, go to Settings→Notifications and turn it on there.

If the switch can't be turned on, the page tells you why. The usual reasons: notifications are blocked for the site (allow them in your browser's site settings, then reload), or the browser can't show a notification while The Margin is closed. Chrome, Edge, Firefox and Safari all can.

Sounds#

While The Margin is open, it can play a short sound when something arrives. There are six: Chime, Glass, Marimba, Bell, Wood and Pop, plus Silent. You pick one for each of three things:

General

anything the app needs to tell you, such as a share, an invitation or a chore waiting for approval.

Chat

a message in a thread you are not reading. A burst of messages plays once.

Mentions

someone typed your name after an @ in a message.

Pick a sound to hear it, or use Test all three. The volume slider starts at 60.

Play sounds, the three choices and the volume follow your account to every device you sign in on. Each device also has its own setting under This device: Follow account, Always or Never. That way a work laptop can stay quiet while your phone doesn't. The device setting is kept on that device only.

Sometimes nothing plays, on purpose:

• a message in the thread you have open
• the first few seconds after the app opens, while the first sync catches up on history
• anything before your first click or key press on the page, because browsers don't allow sound until then. The notification still arrives, just without a sound.

The phone app has the same six sounds under Settings→Notifications, with the same split: your choices follow the account, and the on/off switch can be set for that phone alone.