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Notifications not working on vivo and iQOO
vivo restricts background work harder than stock Android, so without a couple of permissions reminders easily start running late. Below is only what applies to vivo and iQOO phones. 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. 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 → Battery → High background power consumption → turn it on for your app. On newer versions the item is called "Background power consumption management": pick "Don't restrict background power usage" for the app, or "Unlimited" on iQOO.
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
On older versions: Settings → More settings → Applications → Autostart. On Funtouch OS 12 and newer: Settings → Apps & notifications → Special app access → Autostart. If neither exists, search the settings for "autostart".
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
Open the recent apps list and swipe the app’s card down to lock it, as vivo’s English help describes. The older Russian help does the same through a Control Centre whitelist: drag the app icon down and tap the padlock.
Why this gets in the way
On Xiaomi, vivo, OPPO, realme, Tecno and Infinix, clearing the recents list unloads the app entirely, along with everything it had scheduled. A locked card survives that, which is why vivo’s and realme’s own help pages recommend it.
Glossary: Lock in recents
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 vivo’s skins
vivo and iQOO phones ship with Funtouch OS or OriginOS, and the labels differ between them. The logic is the same: the app needs autostart and high background power consumption allowed, otherwise the system limits its background work.
If you cannot see the item, use the settings search and type "autostart" or "background": it is quicker than hunting through menus that move around between versions.
Which skin you have is on the model’s spec page. vivo lists the X300 with OriginOS 6 on Android 16, and the iQOO Neo 11 is listed with the same pair. On phones like these, pick Android 14 and newer in the list.
Common cases
What vivo itself recommends
vivo’s help on keeping an app running in the background gives three answers. Lock it in recents: the English help says to swipe the card down in the multitasking view, while the older Russian help describes a whitelist in the Control Centre, where you drag the app icon down and tap the padlock. Turn it on in the high background power consumption list under Battery, called "Background power consumption management" on newer versions. And allow it to autostart.
The page was written for Funtouch OS. On OriginOS, which iQOO phones use, the items may be named differently, but the logic is the same, and the settings search finds the right screen fastest.
My older vivo has none of these settings
Early versions of Funtouch OS kept these controls in the i Manager app rather than in Settings: high power consumption under its power management section, autostart under app management.
The shade will not open on the lock screen
vivo’s older help says that when a lock screen password is set, the notification panel cannot be opened from the lock screen, to protect what the notifications say.
On newer versions this is a setting: opening the Control Centre from the lock screen, under the lock screen and wallpaper settings. When it is off and the phone is protected by a password, fingerprint or face, the Control Centre will not pull down on the locked screen.
No notifications on the lock screen
vivo’s help lists four steps. Turn on showing notifications on the lock screen under Settings → Notifications & status bar. Switch back to the system lock screen in i Theme, since some third-party lock screen styles do not show notifications. Allow notifications for the app in notification management. And allow it to auto-start, which is a step in the list above.
On Funtouch OS 11 and newer the global item is "Notification on lock screen" under Settings → Apps & notifications (or Notification). Make sure it is not set to "Don't show any notifications".
The labels here are translated from vivo’s Russian help; English firmware may word them slightly differently.
Notifications arrive without sound
Following vivo’s help, check from the top down. Under Settings → Sound & vibration turn off silent mode and raise the volume. In the notification ringtone setting on the same screen, make sure silence is not selected. Then open the app’s own notification settings: the sound may be off for that app alone.
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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