Tool
Notifications not working on Pixel and stock Android
Stock Android has no aggressive manufacturer optimiser on top, so the list is shorter than on Xiaomi or Samsung. When notifications run late, the culprit is almost always one of the system’s own mechanisms. Pick your Android version and only the relevant steps remain.
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. Or Settings → Apps → your app → the advanced section.
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
Settings → Apps → your app → Battery → Unrestricted.
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 → 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 stock Android
Autostart, recents locks and sleeping apps are not things to look for here: stock Android simply does not have those settings. If a guide online tells you to find them, it was written for a different skin.
Since Android 12 the system pauses apps you have not used for a few months on its own: it revokes their permissions and stops background work. If reminders vanished after a long break, open the app’s settings and turn off pausing app activity if unused.
Pixels also run Adaptive Battery, which learns your habits and wakes rarely used apps less often. Exempting the app from battery optimisation lifts that restriction too.
Common cases
Moved to a new phone and reminders started running late
Since Android 14 the exact alarm permission is no longer pre-granted to apps built for Android 13 and later. After a restore from backup it also arrives switched off, even if it was on on the old phone. Alarm clocks and calendars get it under a separate rule; everyone else has to ask.
So after moving phones, open Settings → Apps → Special app access → Alarms and reminders and turn the permission back on for every app you expect reminders from.
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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