LinkedIn notifications: what to turn off, what to keep loud, and how to hear a prospect's reply

LinkedIn notification settings live in Settings & Privacy > Notifications. Turn off feed noise, keep messages on push and email, fix alerts that don't arrive.

By Al Mujahid Khan, Co-Founder & CEO, OLL.E

Published October 31, 2026

LinkedIn notifies you about everything, so the reply from the prospect you have chased for three weeks shows up looking like a stranger's like on a post from March. The fix takes about ten minutes in Settings & Privacy > Notifications. Switch off the categories that only exist to pull you back to the feed, then make sure messages still reach your phone and your inbox.

If you want more than a banner, say a phone call when one named prospect answers, LinkedIn can't do that on its own. There are two ways around it. LinkedIn's message emails in Gmail can be watched from any phone, iPhone included. Watching the LinkedIn app's own notifications works on Android. iPhone keeps each app's alerts to itself, so the app route there needs the PinG keyring.

Where are LinkedIn notification settings?

All in one place, on desktop and in the app.

1. On desktop, click the Me icon at the top of your homepage. In the app, tap your profile photo.
2. Choose Settings & Privacy.
3. Open Notifications (in the left rail on desktop).
4. Under Notifications you receive, open a category and set each option one by one.

Each option inside a category has its own switches, one for push notifications and one for email, and the email side lets you choose how often they come. Your changes save on their own, so there is no button to hunt for.

Which LinkedIn notifications should I turn off?

Most of them. On LinkedIn the default notifications are built to bring you back to the feed, not to tell you a deal is moving. A birthday, a former colleague's work anniversary, someone you follow posting again: each is a reason to open the app, and not one of them is a reason to stop what you're doing.

Here is what I would switch off first, using the names LinkedIn gives them.

• Birthdays and job anniversaries. Push and email both off. Nobody's birthday has closed a deal yet.
• Updates from connections, and Updates from people you follow. This is the feed again, delivered to your lock screen.
• Comments and reactions, which sits under Posting and commenting. If you post often, this is the option that buries your messages. Turn push off and read the reactions when you next open the app anyway.
• Group chats someone added you to. In the app, open the chat, tap the More icon, then Notification settings, and choose Only mentions or Mute notifications. LinkedIn offers this on mobile only.
• Any LinkedIn email you can't place in the list. The Unsubscribe link in the email's footer works, where LinkedIn includes one.

Leave one thing alone while you're in there. Under Connecting with others there is Invitations to connect, and in sales a prospect often accepts or sends an invitation before they write a word.

Which LinkedIn notifications should stay on?

Messages, with push and email both on. Open the category that holds messaging and check both switches for new messages. LinkedIn sends message emails to your primary email address, which matters if you want anything other than the LinkedIn app to notice them. How fast you then answer is its own subject, and I wrote about it for people who sell alone.

InMail confuses people. Replies to an InMail you sent show up in your Messaging inbox, so keep the message switches on. The switch called Allow others to send you InMail? lives elsewhere, under Settings & Privacy > Data privacy > Messages, in the Who can reach you section. It decides whether strangers can InMail you at all. It isn't a noise control. If you sell, leave it on Yes, because the cold inbound InMail is sometimes the best lead of the month.

Message nudges are worth keeping too. They put a reminder next to messages you haven't answered, and with the setting on you also get a push and an in-app notification about them. The switch is in Data privacy, under Messaging experience.

Push or email: which should I use for LinkedIn?

Both, for different jobs. Push is quick and easy to lose in a stack of other banners. Email is slower, but it leaves a record you can search, and other tools can read it.

One rule from LinkedIn's own troubleshooting page catches people who try to be clever: push notifications won't work properly unless in-app notifications are on too. A quiet app with a loud phone isn't an option.

Then check the phone itself. On iPhone, go to Settings > Notifications > LinkedIn and make sure Allow Notifications is on; if you use a Focus, add LinkedIn under Apps in that Focus. On Android, open the phone's notification settings and find LinkedIn in the app list. LinkedIn's help page says to tick the box next to Updates, though the wording varies by phone.

Why are my LinkedIn notifications not working?

Start on the phone (the step above), then LinkedIn's side. LinkedIn's suggested reset is odd but official: in Notifications, open Connecting with others > Updates from your network and switch it off and back on, then do the same for Posting and commenting > Comments and reactions. LinkedIn says new notifications should start to appear within 48 to 72 hours, so don't judge it after ten minutes. If that fails, its help pages point to uninstalling and reinstalling the app.

For missing LinkedIn email notifications, look in spam, junk and the Social and Promotions tabs first. Then confirm your primary address under Settings & Privacy > Sign in & security > Email addresses. LinkedIn also suggests adding it as a trusted sender, and using a personal address rather than a shared or role-based one.

How do I change the LinkedIn notification sound?

LinkedIn has one sound switch, Sound effects, in Settings & Privacy > Account preferences, under General preferences. It's on by default, and it works per platform, so turning it off on your phone leaves your laptop chiming. A phone on silent plays nothing either way.

The tone a push notification makes belongs to the phone, not LinkedIn. Open Settings, search for "notifications", pick LinkedIn and see what your phone lets you change.

How do I manage LinkedIn job alerts?

On desktop, click Jobs at the top of the homepage and go to Preferences > Job alerts, where you can edit or delete each one. In the app, tap Jobs, the More icon, then Job alerts, and use the edit icon next to an alert to change or delete it. Each alert can arrive daily or weekly, by email, app notification or both. To stop one quickly, run the search it belongs to and switch off the job alert toggle on that search's results page.

How do I get a call when a prospect replies on LinkedIn?

LinkedIn can make a message buzz. What it can't do is tell the reply from the buyer you're closing apart from a stranger pitching you an offshore dev team. OLL.E, the app we make, can tell them apart, and it reads from either of two places. The first is LinkedIn's message emails in Gmail: keep email on for messages, connect Gmail, and type the watch. That works on iPhone with nothing extra. The second is the LinkedIn app's notification on your phone, the same text your lock screen shows, which works on Android, and on iPhone with the PinG keyring. Either way it reads only what LinkedIn already sends you.

Name the prospects in the watch and the phone rings for them, then OLL.E tells you what they wrote, while the likes and birthdays can wait. It won't reply on LinkedIn for you. Recruiters have the same problem with candidates, and the recruiter version of these watches covers it.

OLL.E runs on Android, iPhone and the web, and only gets loud for what your sentence describes. For LinkedIn, that means a call when a named prospect or candidate replies, then it tells you what they wrote, with the birthdays and reactions left quiet. It stores no message content. On iPhone the Gmail route works fully; reading the LinkedIn app's notifications needs PinG. The free plan covers a short prospect list; Pro is $19.99 a month. It won't reply, post or connect on LinkedIn for you.