Shared Journal Notifications

With the introduction of Shared Journals, the Android and iOS apps now include notifications about events in the Shared Journal.

Types of Shared Journal Notifications

When notifications are enabled for a Shared Journal, the app will notify you of the following events:

New entries: Someone creates an entry in one of your shared journals.
Entry Edits: Someone updates an entry in one of your shared journals
Comments: Someone posts a comment on one of your entries in a shared journal
Reacts: Someone reacts to one of your entries (or comments) in a shared journal
Membership: Someone joins/leaves shared journals

Note: These notification types are bundled together. You cannot enable or disable specific notification types individually – you can only turn notifications on or off for an entire Shared Journal.

Shared Journal Notification Timing

Notifications for shared journals are delivered on different schedules depending on the type of activity:

Comments

Notifications are sent immediately (both in-app and push) when someone posts a comment.

New Entries

Notifications are sent 5 minutes after the last edit. When someone adds a new entry, we wait 5 minutes before sending a single notification. If they keep editing within that window, the timer resets. This prevents repeated notifications while someone is still writing.

Entry Edits

Notifications are sent up to 10 minutes after the first edit, batched into a single “entry updated” notification per entry. If a “new entry” notification for the same entry hasn’t been sent yet, we skip the separate edit notification and instead extend the new-entry timer – so you still receive just one notification, 5 minutes after their last activity.

Notification Sync and Troubleshooting

The in-app notification bell and push notifications are loaded independently. The bell icon may appear out of sync with push alerts if the app hasn’t refreshed recently. If notifications seem delayed or the bell icon isn’t updating, try forcing a refresh:

Pull down (swipe down) on the screen to reload notifications.
Reopen the app to fetch the latest notifications from the server.

Managing Shared Notifications Setting

To manage notification settings:

Tap the bell icon in the app
Tap the settings (gear) icon
Toggle notifications on or off for each Shared Journal

Note: This enables or disables ALL notification types for that journal. There is no option to receive only certain types of notifications (e.g., only comments but not new entries).

Current Limitations

Granular notification type selection (e.g., receiving only comment notifications but not entry notifications) is not currently available
Notification settings apply to an entire Shared Journal, not to specific notification types