# Notifications and sounds

> The bell holds one inbox for every workspace you belong to. Push brings it to a phone or laptop with The Margin closed, and six short sounds tell you when something arrives while it is open.

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](https://themarginapp.com/docs/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.

> **On the phone:** The phone app has its own **Settings → Notifications**, with
> push for chores, money that is due, mentions and messages. If you said no when
> the phone first asked, turn notifications on for The Margin in your phone's
> Settings app. **Send a test** appears once the phone has
> given permission.

## 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.

**Where to next**

- [Chat](https://themarginapp.com/docs/chat): mentions, muting a thread, and what a message notification carries
- [Family](https://themarginapp.com/docs/family): chores, approvals and pocket money, which send most household notifications
- [Getting help](https://themarginapp.com/docs/getting-help): what to do when a notification never arrives


---

Section: Control and connections. Checked against the running product on October 3, 2026.
Web page: https://themarginapp.com/docs/notifications. Every docs page: https://themarginapp.com/docs/llms.txt