Notifications Guide

How Notifications Work

Push alerts, your phone's calendar, and what "don't ask me again" actually remembers — laid out screen by screen, as the app behaves today.

Two things up front

Nothing in Aphilaty sends texts to your phone's Messages app, and there's no single automatic "spam filter" — those work differently than you might expect, and both are covered in full below. Everything else follows a simple three-layer model: an app-wide switch, an org-level switch, and (for lists) a list-level switch, each narrowing what's above it, never widening it.

How one notification reaches you

Every offer, message, event, or list update passes through the same three checks before it becomes a push alert.

1

Something happens

An org posts, or someone edits a shared list you're on.

2

Checked against your three layers

App-wide toggle for that content type, that org's per-org toggle, and — for lists — the list's own notify setting.

3

Delivered, paced

Sent at your chosen cadence and capped by your max-per-hour/max-per-day limits, which combine any overflow into one digest instead of dropping it.

Three layers of control

A layer only narrows what the one above it allows — it never widens it.

Notify me about

App-wide
Settings → Notifications

Five switches — New offers, Messages, List updates, Events, Order updates. Events defaults off; everything else defaults on. If it's off here, no org can override it.

Notification limits

App-wide
Settings → Notifications

Two steppers (1–20/hour, 5–100/day) capping volume across every org at once. Anything over the cap is combined into a single digest, not dropped — see Part 5.

Receive Messages / Offers / List Updates

Per-org
Settings → Notifications → [an org]

Same three content types, scoped to just that one org — mute offers from one store without muting offers everywhere.

Notification frequency

Per-org
Settings → Notifications → [an org]

Every org can go Silent or Daily. Private/personal orgs (family, friend groups, small teams) unlock four faster tiers — every 4 hours, hourly, every 15 min, or on every update. Schools/stores/civic orgs stay capped at Daily, by design.

Notify on Change

Per-list
Open a list → List Settings

A sharper alert for withdrawn commitments, requester edits, and unmet-deadline warnings. Only offered on personal-type lists, still gated by the two layers above it.

Calendar sync vs. local alarms

Two separate mechanisms live under the reminder bell on ride, court, homework, babysitting, and work-schedule items — Aphilaty never touches your primary calendar.

🔔

Local Alarm

A plain on-device notification at the right time. Nothing written anywhere else, nothing to clean up if the item changes.

📅

Calendar Event

Writes a real event into a dedicated "Aphilaty" calendar your device creates the first time you use it — kept separate from your personal calendar, with its own 15-minutes-before alarm. Standing weekly items become a recurring series per active day; one-time items get a single entry.

You can change this anytime. The first time you turn on a reminder for a list, you're asked which one to use — after that, it's remembered for that list. To switch it later, open that list's List Settings → Reminder Method and tap the other option. It takes effect the next time you turn on a reminder for an item on that list — items already reminding you keep their existing alarm or calendar entry until you turn that one off and back on.

Prompts that remember you — and the ones that don't

This is the precise answer to "what does 'don't ask me again' actually do" — it isn't one universal setting, it's three separate, narrowly-scoped behaviors.

Remembers

Calendar Event vs. Local Alarm

Remembered per list, on this device — and now changeable anytime from that list's Settings (see Part 3), not just at the very first prompt.

Remembers

"You already have a My Family group"

Shown once when an invite collides with a starter family org you already have. Choosing to keep both, or merge, permanently dismisses that specific pairing — a collision with a different org still prompts you.

Always asks

"This looks like a phone number / email"

Shown before posting a message or event containing what looks like contact info. No dismiss-forever option, deliberately — it's a privacy warning, not a preference, so it reappears every single time.

Keeping things from becoming noise

There's no single "spam filter" switch — it's a few narrower tools working together.

🧮

Rate limits that actually combine, not just cap

If ten updates land on one org within your rate window, you don't get ten pushes — you get one: "3 updates in [Org Name]: [item], [item], and 1 more." The cap groups everything queued for that org into a single digest at your chosen frequency, rather than silently dropping the extras. This is what people usually mean when they ask about a spam filter — it's a volume guard, not content moderation.

🚩

Report Content

The icon on any offer, message, or event opens Report content — six reasons, including spam/irrelevant, plus an optional note. Your identity stays hidden from both the org and the content's author — only the platform team sees who reported it.

🛡️

Contact-info scan

Before anything posts, the app checks for patterns that look like a phone number, email, SSN, or credit card. Social Security and credit-card-shaped text is always blocked outright; phone/email only warns and can be posted through — an org admin can loosen the phone/email check specifically for their org.

Not automated yet: an AI content-scanning pass is designed into the pipeline but isn't wired up to a real provider in this build — Report Content is what's actually keeping content in check today, not an automatic scanner running in the background.

Blocking someone: org admins have a backend capability to mark a member "blocked," but there's no button anywhere in the app yet that triggers it. If someone needs to be removed from an org today, that goes through the org admin directly, outside the app.

Does Aphilaty text my phone?

No. Every alert described above arrives as a native push notification — the same tray as any other app. There's no SMS/text-message integration wired up in this build, and nothing posts to your phone's Messages app.

Where to change what

To change…Go toScope
Overall notification types & volume capsSettings › NotificationsEvery org
One org's message/offer/list-update mixSettings › Notifications › [org]That org
How fast one org can alert youSettings › Notifications › [org]That org
Alerts for withdrawn commitments on one listList › List SettingsThat list
Calendar vs. local alarm for remindersList › List Settings › Reminder MethodThat list, this device
Report something you saw⋮ on the itemThat item