Notifications reach you in two different ways: as a push notification
from your device, and inside OutaStory's own notification centre.
They do not have the same reach, and that surprises people.
Where push works
Push notifications work on the web, on Android and on
iPhone.
There is no operating-system push on macOS or Windows. The desktop
apps will not light up your notification area. Everything else still
works there, though: the notification centre at
/notifications collects every notice exactly as it
does elsewhere, so nothing is lost — you just have to look.
Choosing what you receive
Your preferences live at
/settings/notifications, and they are set
per type rather than as one big on/off switch. Turn off the ones you
do not want and keep the rest.
A brand-new account has no saved preferences yet, so everything is on
until you change it. If that is noisy, it takes one visit to the page to
calm down.
Account and security notices are always sent. Those are not optional
— you need to know when something changes about your account or your
sign-in.
There is a companion article with more detail on the preference page
itself: notifications and
preferences.
Resume reading reminders
This one is often misread as a weekly digest. It is not.
A resume reading reminder fires when a story you are at least 20 %
through has gone untouched for seven days or more. After you get
one, there is a 14-day cooldown before you can get another. So it is
a quiet nudge about a book you put down, not a regular newsletter.
Turn it off at /settings/notifications like any other type.
Notices about new serial parts
If you tapped "Notify me" on a serial, you get a notice when a new
part is released. That notice carries a six-hour cooldown per
subscriber, so if an author releases two parts in quick succession you
may get a single notice covering both rather than two in a row.
More about serials: serialized
stories.
Nothing is arriving
The usual cause is the permission prompt. Your browser or your operating
system asks once whether OutaStory may send you notifications, and if
that prompt was dismissed or declined, OutaStory cannot ask again on
its own.
The fix is to allow it yourself:
- In a browser, open the site settings for OutaStory (usually behind
the icon at the left of the address bar) and set notifications to
allowed. - On Android, open your system settings, find OutaStory in the app
list, and allow notifications there.
Then reload OutaStory and check /settings/notifications to confirm the
types you want are still on. Remember that on macOS and Windows there is
nothing to allow — use /notifications instead.