Kacper Pempel/Reuters
Life moves fast, especially in the world of social media, and getting notifications about things you've missed can be important. Whether you actively take part on Twitter and need to know when people engage with your tweets or you just want to keep up with the latest news and posts, it can be a serious problem if your Twitter notifications are not working.
There are a lot of potential reasons you might not be getting your notifications, so here are seven of the most common ways to get Twitter back up and running again. The good news: All these troubleshooting steps are easy to manage.
One reason it can be confusing to troubleshoot a problem with Twitter notifications is that there are so many different settings to check. Start with the most likely one: Have you disabled your phone's notifications for the Twitter app?
If you have an iPhone, tap the Settings app and then Notifications. Scroll down to Twitter and tap it. On the Twitter page, make sure Allow Notifications is on by swiping the button to the right. If you want to, you can customize how notifications appear on the phone elsewhere on the page.
Dave Johnson
On Android, tap the Settings app and then Notifications. Tap App settings, and change the filter at the top of the page to All apps to make it easier to find Twitter. Scroll down until you find Twitter and make sure notifications are on by swiping the button to the right.
Even if notifications for Twitter are enabled in the phone's OS, the Twitter app has its own settings. This is often the culprit, especially if you don't get notifications only for certain kinds of Twitter activities.
In the Twitter app, tap your account icon at the top left of the screen and then tap Settings and support in the menu. Tap Settings and privacy. On the Settings page, tap Notifications. Finally, check your settings in both the Filters and Preferences sections. For example, tap Filters and then Muted notifications. Here you can see if you've turned off certain kinds of notifications you'd like to receive. Then tap Preferences followed by Push notifications, and make sure to turn on any notifications you want to receive.
Dave Johnson
If everything in the first two tips is enabled, there's one more thing to check: your phone's Do not disturb mode. If it's on, you probably won't see any notifications.
On the iPhone, swipe down from the top right of the screen to see the Control Center. Look for the Focus button. If it says Do Not Disturb, Sleep, Driving, or anything other than Focus, most or all of your notifications are probably being muted. Tap the button to turn off this mode. If you have an Android phone, swipe down to see the shortcuts panel, and tap the Do not disturb button if it's enabled.
Dave Johnson
Twitter is a relatively dependable social media service, but despite being online almost all the time, it does have occasional outages. In fact, if you are not seeing any Twitter notifications, there's a chance it's because the service itself is offline. You can check by opening the app and seeing if it appears to be working normally, but to be sure you can check Twitter's status page at Downdetector, or just search for "Is Twitter down" in a Google search. If Twitter is suffering a service outage, you should start to see notifications later, when it's back online.
Dave Johnson
Your ability to get notifications depends on a reliable internet connection, so if your Wi-Fi is having problems, then notifications might be likewise undependable. Check for your Wi-Fi status at the top of the phone's home page, and if you're at home, restart your Wi-Fi router if needed. But if you're not sure if your Wi-Fi is working properly, the easiest solution — at least temporarily — is to simply turn off Wi-Fi and rely on your phone's cellular service. Swipe down from the top right of the screen until you see the iPhone's Control Center or the shortcut panel on Android. Tap the Wi-Fi icon to disable it and see if that resolves your problem.
It's also possible that the app is simply misbehaving and shutting the app down — and then restarting it — will solve your problem. First completely close Twitter (here's how to close an app on Android or close an app on iOS) and then start the Twitter app again. If that doesn't fix the problem, shut down your iPhone and restart it. To shut down most Android phones, press and hold the power button, then choose to shut down when the option appears onscreen. Then try Twitter again.
It's also possible that the Twitter app's data cache might need to be cleared in order to push notifications. If the cache is corrupted or not working properly, you might need to clear it for the app to work properly again. The only way to clear an iPhone app's cache is to uninstall the app and then reinstall it from the App Store. If you are using an Android, though, you can clear the app's cache without removing the app. Just Start the Settings app and tap Apps. If necessary, tap See all apps and then tap Twitter.Then tap Storage & cache, and finally tap Clear storage.
Dave Johnson