Android devices will require an extra step to enable Critical Notifications, please follow our guide on how to enable critical notifications

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Intro

With zendō, you can send push notifications to all members of your household who have the app installed. You can target a specific person or a group of people when sending notifications. Additionally, when someone installs zendō on a new phone or tablet, they will automatically receive notifications.

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Setup push notifications

  1. Tap
    (settings)
  2. Tap “Push Notifications”
  3. Follow the instructions on the screen
  4. You’ll be presented with the option to copy the push notification code snippet

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Install push notification

  1. To use the snippet in your Home Assistant configuration, paste it into the configuration.yaml file. You can either add it to your existing notify section (skipping the notify: line) or append it to the end of the file.
  2. Reload your Home Assistant config. You’ll now have new notify.zendo_push_* entities
The code snippet contains:
  • An entity for each member of your household (e.g. zendo_push_owner)
  • An entity for the admins (zendo_push_admins)
  • An entity to send a message to everyone (zendo_push_everyone)
Remember to update the code snippet if you add or remove a person using People & Invitations
Your code snippet may contain a <TOKEN_PLACEHOLDER> instead of your actual push notification secret token. Remember to replace the placeholder with the token we emailed you when you activated push notifications for the first time (or use the token you already have in your config)
We’ve chosen to use Home Assistant’s built-in functionality instead of building a custom platform. A custom platform would have required an upgrade to the latest Home Assistant version, but our implementation supports most existing versions.

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Send notifications

To use push notifications in your automations, use the Home Assistant built in notify action for one of the pre-defined zendo push entities.
If a member of your household has multiple phone/tables, push notifications are automatically send to all devices for that person
Example: 
action: notify.zendo_push_everyone
data:
  message: Content of your message
  title: Optional title
  data:
    interruption_level: time_sensitive

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Attributes

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message
string
required
The content of your message. Keep your message brief and include emojis if you’d like.
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title
string
An optional title, use sparingly.
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data
object (optional)

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Inspiration: what you can do with push notifications

Here are some examples of cool push notifications you can set up:
  • Notify your household members when the alarm system is armed or disarmed. Send critical push notifications if the alarm is triggered
  • Notify your phone or tablet when the washing machine cycle is complete
  • Get a notification when kids or your housekeeper unlocks the front door while you’re away (by combining push notifications with location-based automations)

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Limitations

You should not solely rely on push notifications for critical or life-threatening situations. Push notifications can be delayed or fail to deliver due to network issues, device settings, or app-specific problems. Therefore, you must have multiple emergency alert systems and backup communication methods in place. Push notifications are rate limited to ensure a good quality of service for everyone:
  • You can target more than one person per request, up to 10 people
  • You can send up to 20 requests per minute
  • There is a soft limit of 50 requests per day

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Privacy

Notifications are sent from your Home Assistant instance to the push infrastructure and then to Apple/Google. All messages are encrypted in transit. The content of your notifications is not stored. We do store the push registration data (token) and simple counters of the total number of push notifications sent (for rate-limiting purposes).

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Notifications are not working

If something is not working, please check our troubleshoot guide.