Configuring and Troubleshooting Allo Notifications
Enable notification permissions on Android and iOS, understand what triggers an alert, and fix common issues when Allo notifications stop arriving.
Notifications ensure you know immediately when a new message arrives — even when the Allo app is running in the background. Because Allo is used for crisis communication and exercises where timely awareness is essential, keeping notifications enabled and correctly configured is an important part of staying operational. This page explains how to turn on notification permissions, what triggers an alert, and what to check when notifications stop working.
What triggers a notification
Allo sends you a notification in the following situations:
- New private message — someone in your organisation sends you a direct, one-to-one message.
- New group message — a new message arrives in one of the groups you are a member of.
Notifications appear as standard system alerts on your phone: a banner on the lock screen, a badge on the app icon, and a sound or vibration if your phone is not silenced.
Notifications are delivered via Bluetooth from your Allo device to your phone. Your phone does not need mobile data or Wi-Fi to receive Allo notifications — but your Allo device must be switched on and connected to your phone over Bluetooth.
Enabling notification permissions
When you first install the Allo app, your phone will ask whether to allow notifications. If you declined at that point, or if notifications have been turned off since, follow the steps below to re-enable them.
Open Settings
Open the Settings app on your Android phone.
Go to App notifications
Tap Apps (or Apps & notifications, depending on your Android version), then find and tap Allo in the list.
Open Notifications
Tap Notifications. You will see a list of notification categories for the app.
Enable all notifications
Make sure the main Allow notifications toggle is turned on. Enable any individual categories — such as messages — that you want to receive alerts for.
Check notification importance
Ensure the notification importance is set to High or Urgent so that alerts appear as banners and play a sound. A lower setting may cause notifications to appear silently or only in the notification shade.
Many Android phones include a battery optimisation or power-saving feature that restricts background app activity. If Allo is included in battery optimisation, your phone may delay or suppress notifications when the app is in the background. To prevent this, go to Settings → Battery → Battery optimisation (the exact path varies by manufacturer) and set Allo to Not optimised or Unrestricted.
What to do if notifications are not arriving
If you are not receiving notifications from Allo, work through the following checks in order.
Check your notification permissions
Confirm that notifications are enabled for Allo in your phone's system settings. Follow the steps above for your platform to verify. A single toggled-off setting is the most common cause of missing notifications.
Check power-saving mode
Power-saving or battery optimisation modes can restrict background app activity, preventing the app from surfacing notifications promptly. Disable power-saving mode or exclude Allo from battery optimisation as described in the platform steps above.
Check your Bluetooth connection
Allo notifications are triggered by incoming messages, which arrive via your Allo device over Bluetooth. If your device is not connected, no new messages can arrive and therefore no notifications will fire. Open the Allo app and confirm that it shows a connected status for your Allo device. If not, check that Bluetooth is enabled on your phone and that the Allo device is switched on and nearby.
Check that the Allo app is not force-stopped
On Android, force-stopping an app can prevent it from receiving background messages. If you or a battery-optimisation feature has force-stopped Allo, open the app again and leave it running in the background.
Check phone notification settings more broadly
Make sure your phone is not in silent or vibrate-only mode if you rely on sound alerts. Check that the notification sound volume is turned up, and confirm your phone screen is not configured to suppress all banners.
Restart the app and the Allo device
Close the Allo app fully, restart your Allo client device, then reopen the app. Wait for the Bluetooth connection to re-establish and test by asking a colleague to send you a message.
Before an exercise or deployment, ask a colleague to send you a test message so you can confirm notifications are working end-to-end. Discovering a notification problem before the exercise starts is far easier than troubleshooting it mid-scenario.
Notification behaviour when offline
If your Allo device is not connected over Bluetooth, incoming messages cannot reach your phone and no notification will appear. Once you reconnect the device, any messages that arrived while you were disconnected will sync to your phone and may trigger notifications at that point, depending on your platform and app version.
Allo does not use push notifications over the internet. All message delivery — and therefore all notifications — depends on the radio mesh and the Bluetooth link between your Allo device and your phone. This is by design: Allo is built to work without any network infrastructure.