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Push notifications on phone

Habitia can send push notifications directly to your phone or laptop when something important happens — a rent payment received, a lease expiring soon, a tenant submitting an urgent maintenance request. You don’t have to be in the app to know.

How it works (high level)

  • The first time you sign into Habitia on a device, the browser asks “Habitia wants to send notifications — Allow / Block?”
  • If you Allow, Habitia registers your device with Firebase Cloud Messaging (FCM) and starts sending notifications to it.
  • Notifications arrive even when your browser is closed, as long as your device is on and connected.
  • If you Block, Habitia stops asking. To turn notifications on later, you’ll need to re-enable them in your browser settings (not from inside Habitia).

Note: Habitia never asks more than once. If you accidentally blocked the prompt, see “If you blocked notifications” below.

What you get pushed

Not every alert becomes a push. The system is intentionally conservative — push notifications are reserved for things that are time-sensitive:

  • Critical Smart alerts — rent overdue, payment failed, subscription past due.
  • Tenant-submitted maintenance requests flagged as High or Urgent.
  • Lease signing complete — when the last signer signs a lease and it moves to Pending review.
  • Application received — a new tenant application landed in your queue.

The full Smart alerts feed (medium and low severity stuff) doesn’t push — that would be too noisy. Check the Alerts page or the Dashboard’s Needs attention card for everything else.

Browser support

PlatformWorks?
Chrome / Edge / Brave on Mac, Windows, Linux
Firefox on Mac, Windows, Linux
Safari on macOS
Safari on iOS (16.4+)✓ (must add Habitia to home screen first)
Chrome / other browsers on iOS✗ (Apple restricts web push)
Chrome on Android

Tip: For iPhones, open Habitia in Safari, tap the share icon, and choose Add to Home Screen. The home-screen launcher version can receive push. The regular Safari tab can’t on iOS until you do that.

Turning notifications on

Most users see the permission prompt automatically on their first sign-in. If you didn’t, or you missed it:

  1. Open Habitia in your browser.
  2. Click the lock icon to the left of the URL bar (Chrome / Edge / Firefox) or the AA icon in the address bar (Safari).
  3. Find Notifications in the dropdown and switch it to Allow.
  4. Reload the page. Habitia will re-register your device.

If you blocked notifications

In Chrome / Edge / Brave:

  1. Click the lock icon → Site settings → Notifications → switch to Allow.
  2. Reload Habitia.

In Firefox: lock icon → Permissions → Send Notifications → Allow (and uncheck “Block”).

In Safari: Safari menu → Settings → Websites → Notifications → find Habitia, switch to Allow.

Logging out

When you log out, Habitia automatically deregisters your device’s notification token. You’ll stop receiving pushes until you sign in again.

Multiple devices

You can have notifications enabled on as many devices as you want — work laptop, home laptop, phone. Each one registers a separate token. When a notification fires, all your devices get it.

What’s next