Telegram notifications not working on Android: fixes

Telegram notifications stop working on Android for one of two reasons: something is switched off inside Telegram itself (a chat category, a single chat, the priority), or the phone is not letting the app run in the background. Check them in that order: the first is quicker.

The case is easy to recognise. The message arrived at two in the afternoon, and you saw it in the evening when you opened Telegram yourself. The phone was not silent otherwise: email pinged, the alarm went off. So it is not the volume or airplane mode. Something sits between Telegram and the system: either the app’s own settings, and there are a lot of them, nested inside each other, or Android plus the manufacturer’s skin.

Every label below comes from Telegram’s official translations platform, so on a phone set to English it should match word for word.

Five causes you can check in a minute

Start with five quick checks: four inside Telegram and one in Android’s settings.

A whole category is off. Settings → Notifications and Sounds, the “Notifications for chats” block. Private Chats, Groups, Channels, Stories and Reactions are switched on separately. If only groups are silent, this is almost certainly it.

The chat itself is muted. In the chat list such a chat is marked “Muted”. The sneaky one is “Mute for…”: you once silenced a chat for an hour and tapped the wrong duration. Open the chat profile, tap Notifications and choose “Unmute”.

You already read it somewhere else. Telegram’s official troubleshooting guide asks you to check that you haven’t already viewed the message on another device. If Telegram is open on your laptop and you read it there, the phone has nothing to remind you about.

Notifications from one account only. With several accounts in the app, the top of Notifications and Sounds has “Show notifications from” → “All Accounts”. Its description reads: “Turn this off if you want to receive notifications only from the account you are currently using.” If it is off, the second account stays quiet.

Android permission is missing. Since Android 13 an app has to ask separately for permission to post notifications. Telegram shows its own “Turn on notifications” dialog with an “Open Settings” button in that case. If you dismissed it, the permission lives in the phone’s settings: Apps → Telegram → Notifications.

The notification arrives, but silently

A silent notification nearly always means the category’s priority is too low: you want High or Urgent. “Priority” sits inside each category, Private Chats for example, with the values Low, Medium, High and Urgent. At Medium, Android shows the notification without sound: that is how the system’s notification channels work, Telegram did not invent it. Telegram’s FAQ says the same in one line: importance has to be set to “High” or greater.

The same setting governs Do Not Disturb. Telegram’s description says: “Higher priority notifications will work even in Do Not Disturb mode.” If a night schedule runs into your morning, that explains the quiet mornings.

You can also change priority in Android’s own settings, on Telegram’s notification channels. The client’s open source code shows that Telegram picks those changes up: the importance you set on a channel in the phone settings becomes the priority inside Telegram, and if you turn off the channel for private chats, groups or channels there, that category goes off in the app too. So look for the switched-off setting in both places.

Nothing until you open the app

If messages only show up once you open Telegram and the locked phone stays quiet, the app is not being allowed to run in the background. Telegram notifications on Android travel through Google’s service, Firebase Cloud Messaging: Google’s server wakes the phone and Telegram shows the message. Telegram’s official guide opens its Android section by asking you to make sure Google Play services are installed and updated. On a phone without them, that delivery channel does not work.

Next question is whether Telegram is allowed to wake up. Three things to check.

Background activity. If Android has restricted Telegram in the background, the app shows an “Allow background activity” dialog saying this will improve notifications and calls. According to the client code it appears on launch on Android 9 and later, at most once a day, and stops appearing entirely once it has been closed three times. So no dialog does not mean everything is fine: open Apps → Telegram → Battery and remove the restrictions.

Two switches inside Telegram. Settings → Notifications and Sounds, the “Other” block:

• “Keep-Alive Service”: “Relaunch app when shut down. Enable for reliable notifications.”
• “Background Connection”: “Keep a low-impact background connection to Telegram for reliable notifications.”

Those are the app’s own descriptions. If notifications go missing, turn both on.

The manufacturer’s skin. Xiaomi, Samsung, Huawei and others run their own optimiser on top of Android, and it stops Telegram regardless of the settings above. Telegram’s FAQ singles out Huawei and Xiaomi: their task killer services interfere with the notification service, so Telegram has to be added to the allowed apps. Telegram even has an official per-manufacturer guide, but it was written in 2017 and its paths are long out of date. Current steps for your brand are in the notification settings checker, for example for Xiaomi and Redmi, Huawei and Honor or Samsung.

The same Telegram guide names two simpler causes. The phone needs free space in its internal memory, not only on the SD card. And once you log out of Telegram, you get no notifications at all.

What is not to blame

Telegram’s Power Saving mode. It arrived in 2023 and lives under Settings → Power Saving. On Android it turns off autoplay for videos and stickers, animations and effects. Telegram’s blog post says nothing about notifications in connection with this mode. In the client’s source code it only switches off animations, autoplay and effects, and the notification code never refers to it.

Telegram Desktop being open, as such. You will sometimes read that Telegram stops sending notifications to the phone while you use the desktop app. We found no official confirmation of that. What is confirmed is the point above: a message you have already seen on another device may not notify you.

If nothing helped

At the very bottom of Notifications and Sounds there is “Reset All Notifications”. Judging by its confirmation text, it resets notification settings to the defaults. A blunt tool, but it clears a forgotten setting you would never find by hand.

And if it is not only Telegram but every messenger and reminder going quiet at once, Telegram is not the problem. Start with the general breakdown of how Android and the skins put apps to sleep.