Notifications and widgets

For Student Workers

Notifications and widgets

Every notification the app can send you, what each one wants from you, and the home-screen widgets that show the same thing without opening the app.

This page is a placeholder. Its structure is fixed; the writing lands in a later phase.

The app pings you when a shift needs you, and a widget shows the same thing without opening it.

Do it

  1. On My Shifts , tap Turn on in the alerts row above your schedule.

    The row stays there until alerts are on. Ignoring it costs you nothing.

  2. Open More , then Settings .

  3. Under Shift reminders , tick the lead times you want. 2 hours, 1 hour, 30 minutes, in any mix. You start on 1 hour.

  4. Turn on Open shifts at other houses to hear about extra work elsewhere. It starts off, because another house is not your coverage.

  5. Add a widget from your phone’s home screen: Upcoming shifts or Open shifts .

What you’ll see

Settings lists the channels you cannot turn off too, switched on and greyed, so you can see that a swap request will always reach you.

Ticking nothing under Shift reminders reads Off, not blank. That is a real choice, not a broken screen.

Rules that apply

  • Anything that needs your answer cannot be silenced. A float, a swap request, break sign-up opening, a preference deadline, a published schedule: someone is waiting on you. See What triggers a notification.
  • A float chases you five times. Reminders land 6 hours, 2 hours, 1 hour, 30 minutes and 5 minutes before your deadline, because only you can answer it. See When you get floated.
  • A drop at your own house always pings you. Your desk’s coverage is not optional reading, so that one has no off switch. See Picking up open shifts.
  • A reminder is checked before it fires. Give the shift away and its reminder is dropped, so you are never nudged toward a shift that is not yours.
  • Widgets only look. Tapping one opens the app, because nothing is claimed or acknowledged from a home screen. What it shows is a snapshot and can lag a little.

If it goes wrong

You tapped Not now and want alerts back. Your phone never asked you, so turn notifications on for Shift in your phone’s own settings.

Nothing has pinged you in days. Check that Shift may send you notifications. A push that keeps failing is retried for about seven hours and then given up on, and your manager is shown the ones that failed.

The widget is behind. Open the app and it catches up. Trust the app, not the widget.