Microsoft Teams notifications not working? Fix them by what you see
No banner, no sound, late alerts or only the hourly missed activity email? Fix Microsoft Teams notifications in Settings > Notifications and activity.
Teams has a fallback for when it can't get your attention. Once you've been away from it, the activity gets rolled into a missed activity email, and by default Teams sends one of those once an hour, so a client's 2:05 question can first reach you as an email in Outlook just before 3. If that email is the only sign you ever get, the push notification is being stopped somewhere between Teams and your screen. Which setting is doing it depends on what you see: no banner, a banner with no sound, a banner that comes late, or nothing but the email.
Every fix below is a Teams or phone setting and costs nothing. For the few people whose messages need more than a banner, our app OLL.E can turn the Teams notification on your phone into an alarm. On iPhone, Teams' alerts stay inside Teams unless the PinG keyring relays them.
No banner at all: Teams notifications not working
If it's the phone that stays dark, open the Teams app, tap your profile picture at the top left and tap Notifications. On Android, the Show notifications toggle at the top must be on. On iPhone, if Teams tells you notifications are off, tap Open settings; that drops you in Settings > Notifications > Teams, where Allow Notifications needs to be switched on. If Teams isn't listed in the iPhone's notification settings at all, Microsoft's fix is to uninstall it and install it again.
Chats but no mentions? Someone edited the list on that screen. On iPhone, All activity puts everything back in one tap. On Android you tap each item.
While you're on that screen, look under Block notifications for Block during quiet hours. It mutes sound and push on a schedule (Certain hours, or All Day on chosen days), and the messages only appear when you open the app. It's the kind of thing you switch on for a holiday and find again in March. Its Set on Teams and Outlook toggle shares the schedule with Outlook on your phone, which is covered in our Outlook notifications guide.
On a computer, click Settings and more (the dots next to your profile picture), then Settings > Notifications and activity. Under Chats and channels every notification type has a dropdown, and Off means off. A single channel can also be set to show alerts only in the Activity feed, which looks like "no notifications" from where you sit. Hover over the channel, pick More options > Channel notifications and choose the Activity feed and banner. Windows has one more switch under General: Mute all notifications (except for calls and meetings). Then check your status. Microsoft's own definition of Do not disturb is that you don't receive notifications, and Teams can switch you to it when you share your screen. If you present a lot, untick Settings > Privacy > Set my status to Do not disturb when I'm sharing my screen.
On a Mac, chats, channels and mentions go through macOS, so System Settings > Notifications > Microsoft Teams > Allow notifications must be on, and every Focus you use needs Teams under Allowed Apps. Calls and meeting start alerts ignore Focus, which is why the call rings and the chat doesn't. The Test notification button under Notifications and activity > Display shows whether a banner can get through at all.
A banner but no sound
Look at Notifications and activity > General first. Play sounds with notifications gives every notification a sound. Play sound with incoming calls, requests to join, and meeting start notifications keeps sound for those three and lets chats arrive silently. Pick the first one.
How do I change the Teams notification sound?
Go to Settings > Notifications and activity > Sound, choose a sound from the dropdown next to each notification type and press Play to hear it. Custom sounds are only on Teams for Windows and the web for now.
On a Mac there's a box for Use Teams sound for notifications instead of the macOS alert sound, and macOS has its own Play sound for notification switch under Notifications > Microsoft Teams. If both are on and it's still quiet, open System Settings > Sound and check the Alert volume slider and which device "Play sound effects through" points at. Headphones in a drawer will happily play every chime you never hear.
On an iPhone, the sound switch sits in Settings > Notifications > Teams. On Android, tap a notification type in Teams' Notifications screen and pick the way it notifies you. And check the phone isn't simply on silent, because Teams can't talk its way past that.
Teams notifications arrive late
A phone alert that turns up ten minutes after the message is often a setting doing its job.
Under Block notifications on the phone, When active on other devices holds mobile notifications back while you're using Teams on your computer or the web. They start again once Teams decides you've been inactive there for a few minutes. Leave the laptop open on your desk, walk to the kitchen, and the phone waits for Teams to notice. Calls are the exception and still reach the phone. Turn the toggle off if you want both devices to buzz. When in meetings, right next to it, does the same during meetings, so a chat sent mid-call lands on your phone afterwards.
On Android, Microsoft also keeps a list of phone models known to have trouble with Teams notifications, with Huawei, OnePlus, OPPO, Samsung, Xiaomi, Lenovo and Asus among them. Most of the fixes are auto-start or protected-app switches that let Teams keep running in the background. The steps differ by model, so follow the ones on Microsoft's mobile troubleshooting page.
Only the email arrives
That email is Teams' missed activity email, sent to Outlook. The frequency is a dropdown at Settings > Notifications and activity > Missed activity emails. It starts at once an hour, and the same menu can turn it off, which is how you stop Teams email notifications.
Leave it on until push works again. It's your net.
| Symptom | First place to look | Where |
|---|---|---|
| No banner on the phone | Show notifications / Allow Notifications, quiet hours | Teams app > profile picture > Notifications |
| No banner on the computer | Chats and channels set to Off, Do not disturb, Mac Focus | Settings > Notifications and activity |
| Banner, no sound | Sound option in General, then the Sound dropdowns | Settings > Notifications and activity > General |
| Arrives late on the phone | When active on other devices, When in meetings | Teams app > Notifications > Block notifications |
| Only the hourly email | Push is blocked; the email is the fallback | Settings > Notifications and activity > Missed activity emails |
Can Teams notify me only for certain people?
Partly, through priority access. Do not disturb stops your notifications, and Microsoft's advice for not missing important messages during focus time is to set priority contacts. In Teams Settings, open Privacy and look for priority access, where you add people by name. General also has Play sounds with urgent and priority contact notifications, which makes their alerts, and messages marked Urgent, stand apart from the rest.
For a client channel, use that channel's own settings (More options > Channel notifications) and set the noisy ones to the Activity feed only. Don't confuse any of this with Presence under Notifications and activity, where Manage notifications tells you when someone's status changes, not when they write to you.
That still isn't enough. Teams treats every chat the same, and the one from your biggest client deserves its own sound. Priority access is tied to Do not disturb, and nothing in Microsoft's help describes giving one person a different sound in the phone app.
Making your manager's Teams messages ring
Say your manager pings at 6:40pm about tomorrow's deck. A watch that names her turns that Teams banner into an alarm, or a call if you'd rather, and OLL.E tells you what she wrote. You set it up by typing who matters as a sentence: her, the Acme channel, anyone else who can't wait until morning. It works from the Teams notification on your phone, on Android by itself and on iPhone through PinG, and it reads only what's on your lock screen.
It doesn't watch Teams on your computer. So if When active on other devices is holding your phone notifications back, OLL.E doesn't see those messages either.
Get Teams notifying your phone first; none of the steps above needs another app. If a few people's messages still sink among everyone else's, OLL.E makes those loud and leaves the rest as ordinary banners. On Android it needs nothing extra. On iPhone it needs the PinG keyring. The free plan covers a couple of watches, and the first one belongs to the client whose 2:05 question shouldn't reach you as an email just before 3.
Questions people ask
Why am I not getting Teams notifications?
Usually a switch is off in the Teams app or on the device. On the phone, tap your profile picture, then Notifications, and check Show notifications (Android) or Allow Notifications (iPhone), plus Block during quiet hours and When active on other devices. On a computer, check Settings > Notifications and activity, your Do not disturb status and, on a Mac, Focus.
How do I change the Teams notification sound?
Go to Settings > Notifications and activity > Sound and pick a sound from the dropdown next to each notification type. Custom sounds are only available in Teams for Windows and the web. If there is no sound at all, check that Play sounds with notifications is selected under General.
How do I stop Teams email notifications?
Turn off missed activity emails in Settings > Notifications and activity > Missed activity emails. The default is one email an hour, and the same dropdown lets you change how often they come. Keep them on if your push notifications aren't working yet, since the email is the backup.
Can Teams notify me only for certain people?
Partly. Microsoft's advice for not missing important messages during focus time is priority access: in Teams Settings, open Privacy and look for priority access, where you add people by name. A General setting also plays sounds for urgent and priority contact notifications so they stand out. For an alarm when one named person writes, an app that watches Teams' phone notifications, such as OLL.E, can do it (iPhone needs the PinG keyring).