Notifications & Reminders
Lunatask has two ways to notify you of time-sensitive events happening in the app – these are notifications and badges.
To get reminded of a task at a certain time, simply drag the task onto the calendar (or desktop) or select "plan into my day" (on mobile). When the time comes, a notification will arrive on all your devices. Notification reminders for tasks are based on our Time Blocking feature.
To receive notifications on your Apple Watch, enable notifications for Lunatask app in the Watch app.
Supported desktop notifications
| Desktop platforms | Supported? | Enabled by default? |
|---|---|---|
| Scheduled (time-blocked) tasks | ✅ | ✅ |
| Scheduled habits | ✅ | ✅ |
| Calendar meetings and events | ✅ | ❌ |
| Birthday and anniversaries | ✅ | ✅ |
| Task timer finishes | ✅ | ✅ |
Desktop app are by default disabled for events coming from external calendars, as most people are likely already receiving notifications for them from their full-featured calendar app like Apple Calendar.
On Mac, be sure to allow notifications in System Preferences > Notifications > Lunatask. On Linux, notifications are supported in any desktop environment that follows Desktop Notifications Specification.
Note that notifications are shown only when Lunatask desktop app is running. This usually is not a problem on Mac or Windows where Lunatask minimizes into system tray on close, but it is worth noting if you are on Linux.
Supported mobile notifications
| Mobile platforms | Supported? | Enabled by default? |
|---|---|---|
| Scheduled (time-blocked) tasks | ✅ | ❌ |
| Scheduled habits | ✅ | ❌ |
| Calendar meetings and events | ❌ | |
| Birthday and anniversaries | Coming soon | |
| Task timer finishes | Coming soon |
Notifications are not enabled by default in our mobile app. Visit Settings → Notifications to enable them.
On Android, Google's notification delivery system is used. Therefore, notifications may not work on some degoogled Android distributions.
Lunatask is a multi-platform, multi-device application that users usually run on several devices. Our mobile notifications therefore must be triggered and sent by our servers (so-called push notifications) to be reliable. Image the following example:
It is 10:45 AM, and you drag a task onto the calendar in our desktop app for 11 AM. In 15 minutes, you expect to receive a notification on all your devices, desktop and mobile. Meanwhile, your mobile device is placed on your table, screen off. As a result, the mobile app won't have the opportunity to sync the latest changes and trigger the notification locally.
However, Lunatask servers only know that something is placed on your Lunatask calendar – they don't know what, as that data is end-to-end encrypted. For this reason, our mobile notifications currently won't show task or habit names. The notification you receive on your lock screen at 11 AM will read "A task on your calendar starts now. Press to see the task!" or "It's 11 AM and time for your habits!" in case of habits.
We are currently looking into more useful notifications, which will show all needed information and also provide actions buttons to, for example, mark a habit as complete directly from the notification itself, while still keeping reliability and end-to-end encryption as the same time.
Badges
Badges are shown on individual areas in the list and also the habit tracker in the main menu, as well as on the app icon in Dock (on Mac), on your home screen (on iOS and Android), and in the system tray (on Windows). A running timer will also show a purple badge on the area where the task belongs.
Area badges can be configured per-area in area settings. There are a few setting options available:
| Setting | Meaning |
|---|---|
None | Never show badge on the area in the list |
All coming up | Shows the number of task which now they came up after being deferred to a future date, or all your today or past tasks in Play Your Week workflow (default) |
All highest priority | Shows the number of tasks in the area with the highest priority assigned, excluding those deferred or scheduled to future dates |
All current | Shows the number of current tasks in the area – your current focus, you "now" tasks (i.e. usually those which are not marked as Later) |
All tasks | Shown the number of all pending tasks in the area |
The badge on the habit tracker menu item shows the number of remaining incomplete habits for today and can also be disabled in the settings.
The sum of all individual numbers on each item will show on the app icon in Dock or system tray.
On Mac, if you see badges on areas in the menu but not on the app icon, be sure to allow notifications in System Preferences > Notifications > Lunatask.