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Android devices 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 people you’ve invited who have the app installed. You can target a specific person or a group. Additionally, when someone installs zendō on a new phone or tablet, they automatically receive notifications.

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Set up push notifications

  1. Tap
    (settings)
  2. Tap “Property”
  3. Tap “Push Notifications”
  4. Follow the on-screen instructions.
  5. You’ll see an 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 person you’ve invited to your zendō (e.g. zendo_push_owner)
  • An entity for the admins (zendo_push_admins)
  • An entity to send a message to everyone (zendo_push_everyone)
Please 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. Please replace the placeholder with the token we emailed you when you first activated push notifications (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 require upgrading 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 Home Assistant’s built‑in notify action for one of the predefined zendō push entities.
If a person you’ve invited has multiple phones/tablets, push notifications are automatically sent 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
    image: https://example.com/image.jpg
    target_entity_id: light.living_room

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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 ideas you can set up. For homes, you could:
  • Notify when the alarm system is armed or disarmed. Send critical 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 unlock the front door while you’re away (combine push notifications with location-based automations).
For commercial properties, you could:
  • Notify when the alarm system is armed or disarmed. Send critical notifications if the alarm is triggered.
  • Get a notification when someone unlocks the front door in the morning.

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Limitations

Please don’t rely solely 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. Please ensure you 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 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 isn’t working, please check our troubleshoot guide.