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Notifications not working on Huawei and Honor
Huawei and Honor close background apps as soon as they decide the apps are surplus, and there is one main lever here: the app launch management screen. Below is only what applies to phones on EMUI, HarmonyOS and MagicOS. Pick your Android version and the list adjusts.
Settings paths checked against manufacturers’ help pages onPaths checked Author: Roman PorfirievskyHow we checkAvailable offline
Not right? Change the choice above and the list rebuilds.
Where to look
Settings → Apps → your app → Notifications. The toggle at the top must be on.
A sketch of the screen. Labels and row order on your phone may differ. Why this gets in the way
Since Android 13 an app has to ask for this separately on first launch. Declining switches off every notification the app has, reminders included, and the dialog never appears again: the only way back is by hand.
Glossary: Notification permission
Where to look
Settings → Apps → Special app access → Alarms and reminders.
A sketch of the screen. Labels and row order on your phone may differ. Why this gets in the way
Without this permission the system is free to move a reminder: inexact alarms get batched, and the phone wakes once for all of them, sometimes a minute later, sometimes fifteen. Since Android 14 it is no longer granted automatically even to apps that declare it at install time.
Glossary: Exact alarms
Where to look
Search the settings for battery optimisation, find your app and set it to not be optimised. In the MagicOS 10 guide that name belongs to a different screen with an OPTIMIZE button; if the search lands there, it is not the right place.
A sketch of the screen. Labels and row order on your phone may differ. Why this gets in the way
Doze puts the phone to sleep once it lies still with the screen off, and standby buckets since Android 9 cut background work for apps you rarely open. An exemption lifts both.
Glossary: Battery optimisation
Where to look
Settings → Battery → App launch (the path in help for Android 9-12) → your app → turn off Manage automatically and turn on all three: Auto-launch, Secondary launch, Run in background. Honor’s current help uses Optimizer → % remaining → App launch. The settings search finds the screen fastest: type "App launch".
A sketch of the screen. Labels and row order on your phone may differ. Why this gets in the way
The skin refuses to let the app start after a reboot or after it has been cleared from memory. At that point there is nobody to show the reminder: the app is not running and never learns that the time has come.
Glossary: Autostart
Where to look
Settings → Apps → your app → Notifications → the reminders channel. Set it to urgent, or turn on pop-ups together with sound.
Why this gets in the way
A medium-importance channel arrives silently: the notification is in the shade, the sound is not. An app cannot raise its own importance, only you can, so if you once turned it down this is the only place to put it back.
Glossary: Notification channels
Where to look
Settings → Notifications → Do Not Disturb → Exceptions. Permission to override the mode is granted to a specific channel, not to the whole app.
Why this gets in the way
It does not cancel the notification, it mutes it. If a night schedule runs into your morning, the reminder arrives silently, and from the outside that looks exactly like a reminder that never came.
Glossary: Do Not Disturb
Where to look
Settings → Apps → your app → Mobile data and Wi-Fi → allow background data and allow usage while data saver is on.
Why this gets in the way
This one is about sync rather than the reminders themselves: without background data, records from your other devices only arrive when you open the app. Reminders keep working, because they live in the system rather than on the network.
Glossary: Background data
Only the steps for this case are shown.
The app has notification settings of its own as well. Our guide: Telegram notifications not working on Android: fixes
The app has notification settings of its own as well. Our guide: WhatsApp notifications not working on Android: what to check
List complete
Now test it on a real reminder, instructions below.
Point the phone camera at the code: the same list opens with your choices.
The page address remembers your choice, so you can send the link to whoever has a silent phone: they open it and get the instructions for their model straight away.
The list is generic: it works the same for any app with reminders or alarms, or for a messenger. KIPRI is only mentioned as an example, so substitute whichever app is going quiet on you.
What is different about EMUI, HarmonyOS and MagicOS
Huawei and Honor were one company for a long time, so their skins share the same logic. The app launch screen defaults to automatic management, and that is what decides when an app may run in the background. For the app you care about, switch it to manual.
Huawei phones without Google services are a separate story. Messenger and email notifications there arrive through Huawei’s own delivery system, and an app that does not support it may get them late or not at all. Reminders the app schedules on the phone itself are unaffected: they fire with no internet and no Google services.
Since splitting from Huawei, Honor ships its phones with Google services, so the delivery problem mostly concerns Huawei.
The steps go by the skin, not the series. Honor’s spec page lists the Honor 200 Lite with MagicOS 8.0 based on Android 14, and Huawei’s lists the nova 8 with EMUI 12. Both skins are covered by this page.
Common cases
My Honor has no App launch screen
On some Honor phones the section has a shorter name. Honor’s instructions: open Settings, search for the launch section, turn off Manage automatically, and in the pop-up allow Run in background.
That may not be enough if the system is also optimising the app’s battery use. Use the same search to open battery optimisation and set your app to not be optimised. In the MagicOS 10 guide, "Battery optimization" is a different screen with saving tips and an OPTIMIZE button; if the search lands there, it is not the right place.
After a reboot nothing arrives until I open the app
Honor’s help says this is normal: after a reboot the app has not been started yet. Open it once by tapping its icon and notifications start arriving.
If they still do not arrive after that, look at the app launch screen. Under automatic management the system decides whether an app may run in the background. Honor’s current route to the screen is Optimizer → % remaining → App launch: turn off Manage automatically for the app there and switch on Auto-launch, Secondary launch and Run in background.
Auto-launch is allowed, but the app still gets closed
Honor has a help page for this, titled "Background apps are forced to close". Besides the launch screen it names two more settings. Search the settings for Battery optimization, find the app under All apps and set it to Don’t allow. Then open Settings → Battery and turn off Power saving mode and Ultra power saving mode. It also suggests uninstalling third-party management apps, because they can force background apps to close.
The same page is frank about the limits. Honor calls the problem common in Android: when an app stays in the background for a long time, Android’s sleep mechanism and the app’s own power saving work together to stop it. So an app left alone long enough can be closed even with every switch set.
Text messages arrive silently or without a notification
The list above is about third-party apps. The built-in Messages app has its own settings, and that is where Huawei and Honor support pages send you. On Huawei: Settings → Apps & services → Apps → Messages → Notification manager. Allow notifications should be on, together with lock screen, banners and badges.
The second item on the same page is easy to miss: pick SIM 1 or SIM 2 and turn off Smart notifications. Honor’s help describes the same switch under Settings → Apps → Messages → Notifications. Both pages also ask you to check that Do Not Disturb is off. Labels on English firmware can differ slightly from these.
Telegram is silent and the instructions point to Protected apps
Telegram’s official FAQ still tells Huawei owners to add Telegram to Protected apps in Phone Manager. That section existed in old EMUI versions. On current Huawei firmware and on Honor’s MagicOS, background work is controlled by the app launch screen from the list above.
The rest of that FAQ applies to any phone: in Telegram → Settings → Notifications and Sounds, notifications should be on and importance set to High. The FAQ also requires Google Play services, so on a Huawei phone without them Telegram notifications can run late even when everything else is set up.
Notifications are not shown on the lock screen
Honor’s help starts with the global switch: Settings → Notifications → Lock screen notifications → Display all notifications. If a notification appears but without its text, turn off hiding content in the same place. For a single app the same is set in Settings → Apps → your app → Notifications.
A less obvious cause from the same page: with face unlock, notification content stays hidden until the phone recognises you. That is controlled in Settings → Face recognition, by the smart lock screen notifications option.
A notification sits in the shade with no sound or banner
Most likely the app has smart notifications turned on. Huawei describes them like this: notifications appear only in the notification panel, with no banners, no status bar or lock screen icons, and no vibration or sound. Turn it off in Settings → Notifications & status bar, under the app.
Sources
- Honor: unable to receive notifications from third-party apps
- Honor: lock screen notifications not displayed
- Honor MagicOS 10 guide: power management
- Honor: background apps are forced to close
- Honor: App launch, the three switches (in "Apps launch slowly")
- Honor 200 Lite specifications: operating system
- Huawei nova 8 specifications: operating system
How to check whether it worked
In the app you care about, set a reminder exactly 15 minutes from now, lock the phone and press the button. You can close this tab: the timer remembers the time and will wait for you.
Leave the phone alone until the countdown ends: unlocking wakes the system and spoils the test.
Time is up. Did the reminder arrive?
The skin is leaving the app alone
If reminders still run late in real life, repeat the test over three hours: some skins only put an app to sleep after a long idle stretch.
What is left is choosing where the reminders live. KIPRI schedules them on the phone itself, so they fire without the internet. Download for Android
The system is shifting the reminder
That is what an inexact alarm or a battery restriction looks like. Start with these steps, change one setting at a time and rerun the test.
The app was not allowed to show it
Either notifications are blocked or the skin stopped the app entirely. Start with these steps, change one setting at a time and rerun the test.
Set a reminder fifteen minutes out, lock the phone and put it face down. Do not touch it: unlocking resets the sleep timer and ruins the test.
Arrives on the second, and you are done. Late or missing, and you go back to the list, change one setting at a time and rerun the same test. That is how you find out which one was in the way.
Fifteen minutes is sometimes not enough: some skins only kill an app after an hour or two of idling. If the quick test passes but real life still runs late, repeat it with a three-hour gap.
And do not install "optimisers" or "boosters" from the app store. They do exactly the thing you are complaining about: close background processes.
If none of it helped
- Check whether notifications from other apps arrive. If the whole phone is quiet, the problem is the system rather than one app: look at your night schedule and reboot.
- Make sure a reminder actually exists, rather than a task with no time on it. That is the most common cause among the ones that have nothing to do with settings.
- If the phone has a work profile or parental controls, restrictions may be set at device policy level, and local settings do not override them.
- And write to the app developer. If the app does not show the status of its own permissions, that is their shortcoming, not yours.
- Instructions for one specific model have been collected for years at dontkillmyapp.com, a community project rather than ours.
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