Gmail and Yandex Mail notifications not working on Android

By default Gmail on Android only notifies you about mail in the Primary category, and with sync switched off it does not notify you at all. Those are the two main reasons Gmail notifications stop working. Yandex Mail sets notifications per folder, and battery saving or a disabled autostart silences them.

From the outside it all looks the same: the email came in the morning and you found out in the evening, when you opened your mail. Messengers do this less often: mail apps do not notify you about everything, and that selectiveness is configured in several places at once. Below are Gmail and Yandex Mail separately, following their official help pages. At the end, a few words on Samsung’s built-in Email app.

Why Gmail notifications are not working

For Gmail the causes run in this order: the message’s category, the account’s notification level, sync, and Android’s own permission.

It does not notify about everything, by design

Google’s help says: “By default, notifications are turned on for any messages in your Primary label.” If you use inbox categories, mail in Promotions, Social, Updates and Forums produces no notification. When an important message from a service or a bank quietly lands in Updates, this is why.

To get notified about mail with a specific label, account settings have Manage labels. For the label, set Sync messages to the last 30 days or All. The help page is clear that this is required: “If you don’t sync messages, you can’t turn on notifications for that label.”

The notification level for the account

Mail also arrives silently when the account is set to “High priority only”. The choice lives in Gmail’s settings: pick the account, then “Email notifications” under Notifications. Google warns that high priority overrides the notification settings of individual labels. So a message can arrive without a notification even if notifications are on for its label.

Sync: no sync, no notifications

With “Sync Gmail” unticked there are no notifications at all, which makes it the key thing to check. The box is in the Gmail account settings, under “Data usage”. The help explains: “When this setting is on, you’ll get notifications and new emails automatically. When this setting is off, you have to pull down from the top of your inbox to refresh.”

Google’s sync troubleshooting lists “You don’t get new message notifications” among the symptoms and adds a few more causes:

• Account sync in Android. The help page path: About phone → Google Account → Account sync → More → Sync now. Google notes it differs between devices.
• Low storage on the phone. “If your device is low on storage space, the Gmail app doesn’t sync.”
• A full Google Account storage. Then you cannot send or receive mail at all, and messages sent to you return to the sender.
• Up to 15 minutes of delay. The help says sync can take up to fifteen minutes, so sometimes nothing is wrong yet.

System notifications

Without Android’s permission, Gmail notifications will not show whatever the app’s settings say. The check: Gmail Settings → General settings → Manage notifications. That opens Android’s notification settings for Gmail, where “All Gmail notifications” has to be on.

Yandex Mail notifications not arriving

Yandex Mail has three places to check: per-folder notifications, its own Do Not Disturb mode and background activity.

Notifications per folder

In the Yandex Mail app for Android, notifications are switched on via the avatar in the bottom right → Settings → Notifications → Notification settings. That opens the phone’s system settings. These paths follow Yandex’s Russian help page; its English page still describes an older layout, where Settings sits under the folder list, so the labels in your app may differ.

Folders are configured separately: Settings → your mailbox → Notifications. For each folder you pick one of three options. Yandex’s English help names them “Notifies about emails and downloads them”, “Sync without notification” and “Do not sync”. Yandex’s own example: notify about all incoming mail except newsletters.

Its own Do Not Disturb

Yandex Mail has a “Do not disturb” mode inside the app: Settings → Notifications → Do not disturb, with a time period. According to the Russian help page, it exists only in the Android app. If mail goes quiet at the same hours every day, start there.

When notifications are on but nothing arrives

Yandex has a dedicated help section for this, and it lists the causes plainly:

• the app is not allowed to run in the background;
• autostart (“autorun” in Yandex’s English help) is off;
• battery saving is on, which, in the help’s words, usually blocks notifications and sometimes switches itself on when the battery is low;
• battery savers or phone “boosters” are installed: the help suggests removing them or adding Yandex Mail to their exceptions.

Autostart and background activity hide in a different place on every brand; the paths are in the notification settings checker.

Samsung Email and other mailboxes

If your mail is set up in Samsung’s own Email app, it has its own email sync switch and a sync schedule, both in the app’s settings under the account. According to Samsung’s help, mail can arrive as soon as it is received, at a set interval from 15 minutes to 4 hours, once a day, or only manually. With an interval set, a notification cannot arrive before the next check of the mailbox. Also check the phone-wide auto sync data setting in the phone’s account settings. Samsung’s page with these steps is in Russian, so the names here are descriptions, not the labels of the English interface.

If it is not only mail but every app going quiet, the mail client is not the problem. Start with the general breakdown of how Android and the skins put apps to sleep.