Home Assistant Notifications: The Complete Setup Guide

What notification methods does Home Assistant support?

Home Assistant is one of the most flexible notification platforms in the smart home space. It can send alerts through over 20 different channels, all via the unified notify service. Main options include:

• Mobile push notifications — via the HA companion app (iOS/Android). Rich content, action buttons, critical alerts. The most popular and most capable option.
• Telegram — free bot notifications to your Telegram account or group. Supports images, video, location, inline keyboards.
• Email (SMTP) — send emails from HA via Gmail, SendGrid, or any SMTP server.
• Persistent notifications — banners that appear inside the HA dashboard UI. Useful for reminders you'll see when you open the app.
• Amazon Alexa (TTS) — speak notification text on Echo speakers via the Alexa Media Player integration.
• Google Home (TTS) — speak notifications on Nest/Chromecast speakers.
• Discord, Slack, WhatsApp — send messages to channels via HACS integrations.
• SMS — via Twilio or other SMS gateways (costs ~$0.01 per message).

How do you set up mobile push notifications?

The Home Assistant companion app is the gold-standard notification method. Here's how to set it up:

1. Install the HA companion app — available free on the App Store and Google Play.
2. Open the app and log into your Home Assistant instance (local URL or Nabu Casa remote URL).
3. The app automatically registers your device as a notification target in HA. Go to Settings → Companion App → Notifications to verify.
4. In Home Assistant, go to Settings → Devices & Services — your phone appears as a device with a notify.mobile_app_YOUR_PHONE service.

Each person's phone registers as a separate notification target. If you have a household with two people, you'll see notify.mobile_app_janes_iphone and notify.mobile_app_johns_pixel — allowing you to send alerts to specific people.

How do you send a notification from an automation?

The simplest automation action to send a notification looks like this in YAML:

service: notify.mobile_app_my_phone
data:
  title: "Front Door"
  message: "The front door was opened at {{ now().strftime('%H:%M') }}"

You can create this in the HA automation UI: in an automation's Actions tab, choose "Call Service," select your notify.mobile_app_* service, and fill in the title and message fields. Use the visual editor for simple notifications or switch to YAML for templates and advanced options.

To notify all household members at once, use the notify.notify service (which sends to all registered mobile devices) or create a notification group:

# In configuration.yaml
notify:
  - name: all_phones
    platform: group
    services:
      - service: mobile_app_janes_iphone
      - service: mobile_app_johns_pixel

How do you send rich notifications with images and action buttons?

The HA companion app supports rich push notifications with images, category actions, and critical alerts. These are especially powerful for security cameras and door sensors.

Notification with camera image:

service: notify.mobile_app_my_phone
data:
  title: "Motion Detected"
  message: "Motion on front porch camera"
  data:
    image: /api/camera_proxy/camera.front_porch
    url: /lovelace/cameras

The image field attaches a snapshot from your camera entity. The url opens a specific HA dashboard page when you tap the notification.

Notification with action buttons (iOS):

service: notify.mobile_app_my_iphone
data:
  title: "Garage Door Open"
  message: "The garage door has been open for 10 minutes."
  data:
    actions:
      - action: "CLOSE_GARAGE"
        title: "Close Garage"
      - action: "IGNORE"
        title: "Ignore"

When the user taps "Close Garage," HA fires an event that you can trigger another automation on — allowing full two-way control from notifications.

Critical alerts (iOS only) bypass Do Not Disturb mode. Use them for critical events like smoke detector alarms or water leak sensors:

data:
  push:
    sound:
      name: default
      critical: 1
      volume: 1.0

How do you set up Telegram notifications?

Telegram is the second most popular HA notification method — it's free, fast, and works anywhere in the world without any subscription or special app installation.

1. Create a Telegram bot: Open Telegram, message @BotFather, send /newbot, and follow the prompts. Copy the bot token (looks like 123456789:ABCdefGHI...).
2. Get your Chat ID: Message your new bot, then visit https://api.telegram.org/bot<YOUR_TOKEN>/getUpdates in a browser. Find the chat.id number in the response.
3. Configure in Home Assistant: Add to your configuration.yaml:

   telegram_bot:
     - platform: polling
       api_key: "YOUR_BOT_TOKEN"
       allowed_chat_ids:
         - YOUR_CHAT_ID
   
   notify:
     - name: telegram
       platform: telegram
       chat_id: YOUR_CHAT_ID
     

4. Restart Home Assistant. Use service: notify.telegram in automations.

Telegram notifications support images, documents, location data, and HTML formatting. You can also set up incoming message handling — reply to a Telegram message to trigger an HA action.

How do you send email notifications from Home Assistant?

Email notifications work via any SMTP server. Gmail works, but requires an App Password (not your main password). Configure in configuration.yaml:

notify:
  - name: email_notify
    platform: smtp
    server: smtp.gmail.com
    port: 587
    starttls: true
    username: [email protected]
    password: "your_app_password"
    recipient: [email protected]
    sender: [email protected]

Email is best for detailed reports (daily energy summaries, weekly usage reports) rather than real-time alerts — mobile push notifications have much lower latency. Email also supports HTML content for formatted reports with tables and charts.

What are persistent notifications?

Persistent notifications appear as banners in the HA UI sidebar. They're not delivered to your phone — they're reminders that appear when you open the dashboard. Use them for low-priority, non-urgent information:

service: persistent_notification.create
data:
  title: "Water Filter Reminder"
  message: "Your water filter is due for replacement this month."
  notification_id: water_filter

Use notification_id to update or dismiss the notification later from another automation. Call persistent_notification.dismiss with the same ID to remove it once the issue is resolved.

What are the best practices for HA notifications?

• Use notification throttling: Add conditions to avoid sending the same notification repeatedly. For example, only send a "door open" alert once every 30 minutes, not every time the sensor updates.
• Group by priority: Use mobile push for urgent alerts (motion, water leak, smoke), Telegram for household messages, and persistent notifications for reminders.
• Use templates for context: Include the time, entity state, or last-changed duration in messages: "Garage open for {{ relative_time(states.cover.garage.last_changed) }}"
• Test notifications: Use Developer Tools → Services in HA to manually call your notify service and verify formatting before deploying in automations.
• Avoid notification fatigue: Too many notifications train people to ignore them. Reserve push notifications for events that actually need human attention.

Frequently Asked Questions

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