# "The bell: your notifications inbox"

> The bell at the top of every page is where InfraNest tells you what needs you. It is organised by what still needs doing, not by what you've read: a broken…

Source: https://infranest.io/docs/notification-bell
Last updated: 2026-10-26

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The bell at the top of every page is your notifications inbox — the one place InfraNest tells you what still needs your attention, whether you've read it or not.

## Overview

- Organised by what still needs doing, not by what you've already read — a broken thing doesn't stop being broken just because somebody looked at it.
- Shows problems that need you, updates on what happened, and what got fixed this week.
- Works the same from any page, and on your phone.

## Open the bell

1. Click the **bell** at the top of the page, or press **Shift+N** anywhere.
2. It opens as a panel beside the page you're on, so you don't lose your place. On a phone it fills the screen.
3. Press **Esc** to close it.

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!["The bell: your notifications inbox"](/media/58272334-49e0-4449-938a-154acc868d45)

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> [!NOTE]
> The number on the bell counts what's under **Needs you**, plus updates you haven't seen. Fixed, snoozed and repeated problems don't count.

## Check what Needs you

This is where problems that are still happening live — a monitor that's down, an integration that stopped syncing, a domain about to lapse.

1. Open the **bell** and look under **Needs you**.
2. Read each card: the problem and when it started, a detail line underneath (for example *HTTP 503* or *expires in 6 days*), and who was told.
3. Point at the **who was told** line to see every place the alert went.
4. Click the card's button to act on it, or click anywhere else on the card to go straight to the problem.

A card stays under **Needs you** until the problem is actually fixed — reading it doesn't clear it.

## Acknowledge a problem

1. On a down monitor's card, press **Acknowledge**.
2. This marks the incident as acknowledged, so everyone's bell shows **You're on it** or **{name} is on it**.
3. It stops the repeat alerts for this outage.
4. If your organisation uses PagerDuty, it's acknowledged there too.

Acknowledging works on every plan.

## Add a note for your team

1. On an acknowledged incident's card, press **Add a note**.
2. Type what you're doing, for example *Restarting the database, back in 5*.
3. Press **Add note**.

The note shows on the card for everyone, appears on the incident's timeline, and is added to PagerDuty as a note. Press **Add another note** to add more.

> [!WARNING]
> Notes are for your team only — they never appear on your status page and are never emailed to subscribers. To tell customers, post a status update on the incident instead.

You can also add a note from an alert email right after pressing **Acknowledge**, or by replying to the alert in Telegram.

## Handle a monitor that goes down every night

1. If a monitor keeps failing around the same time, its card says so, for example *Goes down around 23:00 — 4 times this week. Expected?*
2. Press **Add a daily maintenance window**.
3. Check the form, which is already filled in for that monitor and time.
4. Press **Save** — nothing changes until you do.

## Review earlier outages

A monitor that failed several times this week shows one card instead of many, for example *3 outages this week · Show 2 earlier outages*.

1. Open the card.
2. See when each outage happened and how long it lasted.

## Review Updates

Updates are things that happened, like a recap being ready or someone asking to join.

- A blue dot means you haven't seen it yet.
- The double tick at the top of the panel marks all updates read.
- The same thing happening again shows as one row with a count, like **2×**.
- Updates older than a week fold into **Older than a week**.

## Check Resolved this week

What got fixed is folded away at the bottom of the panel. Fixed problems show when and how long, for example *Resolved today, 09:31 · after 19 min*. The recovery message is folded into the original entry, so you see one card, not two.

## Use the ⋯ menu

Every notification has a **⋯** menu with everything else you can do. Only what applies to that notification is shown.

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!["The bell: your notifications inbox"](/media/6462c285-c4ff-43dd-a30e-e983bbf09db1)

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- **Silence 1 h** — no more alerts about this monitor for an hour.
- **Snooze this server 1 h** — for a server that stopped reporting.
- **Remind me in 7 days** — for a certificate or domain that can wait.
- **Approve this person** / **Deny this person…** — for someone asking to join.
- **Approve this run** / **Reject this run…** — for an automation waiting on a person.
- **Mark as read.**
- **Why did I get this?** — opens your notification settings on the row that sent it.
- **Stop showing Monitoring notifications in the app** (or Domains, DNS, and so on). Billing and System can't be stopped.
- **Delete.**

Anything that asks for confirmation, like denying someone, asks once more before it happens.

## Understand Held back for you

Sometimes InfraNest holds a notification back on purpose, and the bell tells you, for example *Held back for you: 1 email skipped — you had already read it*.

1. Click **Show** to see each one and why:
   - **Email skipped — read in the app first**
   - **Blip skipped — back within minutes**
   - **Held during quiet hours**
   - **Held — you were off shift**
   - **Held — you were away**
   - **Email held — several about the same thing already this hour**

Urgent problems and security alerts are never held back this way.

## Respond to pop-ups for urgent problems

While you have InfraNest open, an urgent problem also pops up in the top-right corner — a monitor going down, an integration breaking, or a security alert about your account.

1. Press **Open** to go straight to it, or **Dismiss** to close it.
2. If several arrive at once, you see one with a count of the rest.
3. A pop-up goes away by itself once it's no longer true: the monitor is back up, someone acknowledges it, or you open it in the bell.
4. After 30 seconds it shrinks to a small **1 urgent problem** button in the same corner. Security alerts stay full size until you dismiss them.

> [!TIP]
> You can turn pop-ups off per kind using the **Pop-up** column in your notification settings.

## Use the keyboard

| Key | What it does |
|---|---|
| **Shift+N** | Open or close the bell |
| **↑ / ↓** (or **k / j**) | Move between notifications |
| **Enter** | Open the selected one |
| **A** | Acknowledge it |
| **E** | Mark it read |
| **.** | Open its ⋯ menu |
| **Esc** | Close the bell |

## See every notification, ever

1. At the bottom of the panel, click **View all notifications**.
2. Search and filter the full history. Nothing is deleted from it when a problem is fixed.

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!["The bell: your notifications inbox"](/media/41c93a8c-09dd-45f5-9248-eaae675b587d)

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