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Samsung Galaxy notifications not working
Samsung decides by itself which apps to put to sleep, and it does so quietly: an app lands on the sleeping list and its notifications stop arriving without any warning. Below is only what applies to Galaxy phones on One UI. 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.
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 → Battery → Background usage limits on One UI 7 and later; on older firmware it is Settings → Battery and device care → Battery → Background usage limits. Make sure the app is in neither Sleeping apps nor Deep sleeping apps, and add it to Never auto sleeping apps.
A sketch of the screen. Labels and row order on your phone may differ. Why this gets in the way
Samsung keeps two lists, sleeping and deep sleeping apps. A deep sleeping app does not run in the background at all and shows no notifications, and it can land there automatically simply because you have not opened it for a few days.
Glossary: Sleeping apps
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 One UI
One UI keeps two lists, sleeping apps and deep sleeping apps. If you do not open an app for a few days, the system may move it there on its own. A deep sleeping app does not run in the background at all, and its reminders do not arrive.
The background usage limits screen has a master switch that puts unused apps to sleep automatically. You can turn it off altogether and stop policing the lists, at a small cost in battery life.
Power saving mode also cuts background work. If notifications only run late when the battery is low, that mode is the likelier cause than any setting of the app itself.
Common cases
An app you rarely open stopped sending notifications
That is One UI’s automatic sleep at work. Samsung’s developer documentation gives the timings plainly: an app unused for about three days that is draining the battery goes into Sleeping apps, and one unused for 16 days goes into deep sleep, a period Samsung says may change. A deep sleeping app gets no notifications until you open it.
To stop policing the lists every week, add the app to Never auto sleeping apps. Samsung warns that apps there use more battery in the background, so keep that list to the things you really expect to hear from: an alarm, reminders, a messenger.
There is no Device care in my settings
On One UI 7 Battery moved to the top level of Settings, so the path to the sleeping lists got shorter: Settings → Battery → Background usage limits. Guides on forums are usually older and go through Battery and device care, which newer Galaxy phones no longer show in that spot.
Labels drift a little between versions. If something does not match, search the settings for "background usage": it gets you to the right screen faster.
Text messages do not arrive or arrive silently
Samsung’s help on text messages starts with the block list. Blocked messages, it says, arrive with no sound or notification and are filed under Spam or Blocked messages. The list lives in Samsung Messages itself: Settings → Block numbers and spam → Block numbers.
The second cause on the same page is Do Not Disturb, which turns off notifications for new messages. If messages go quiet only at certain hours, check the schedule of that mode.
One app is silent: a messenger, email, social network
Samsung’s help starts at the notification panel: open notification settings and filter by apps with notifications turned off. If your app is there, switch it on. Then Settings → Apps → your app → Notifications: notification permission should be on, along with the lock screen, icon badge and notification panel.
Many apps have their own notification categories, and Samsung specifically suggests checking the app’s own settings. In Telegram that is Settings → Notifications and Sounds.
Notifications arrive without sound
Samsung’s help first suggests leaving Mute or Vibrate mode and checking the separate notification volume slider: Settings → Sounds and vibration → Volume → Notifications. It is independent of the ringtone volume.
If a single app is silent, its sound is set per category. On Android 14-16 first turn on managing notification categories for apps under Settings → Notifications → Advanced settings. Then Settings → Apps → your app → Notifications → Notification categories, pick the category and check Sound.
Notifications are not shown on the lock screen
On Android 13 and newer the global switch is in Settings → Notifications → Lock screen notifications. Each app also has its own option to hide notifications while locked, in its notification settings. Samsung notes a small detail: Always On Display shows only app icons, never the text.
The alarm only vibrates, no sound
In Samsung’s Clock app, More options → Settings, there is "Silence alarms when system sound is off". With it on, the alarm goes quiet along with system sounds and only vibrates. Samsung advises turning it off if the alarm only vibrates.
It is not the only reason an alarm stays quiet: silent mode, Do Not Disturb exceptions, the alarm’s own volume slider and headphones in their case are covered in the article on why an Android alarm did not go off.
Sources
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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