Notification centre
The bell in the menubar is your in-app inbox. Every significant event that concerns you — an invite, a role change, a review outcome, a payout, a consent receipt — lands there, whether or not it also emails you. It's available on the web app and the mobile app; the desktop app hides it (see Gotchas).
What you see
- A badge with your unread count (capped at 99+). It refreshes every 15 seconds while the tab is visible, and again whenever you come back to the window.
- Tapping the bell opens a dropdown with your 20 most recent notifications, unread ones highlighted. Each shows a title, a body, the organization it concerns (when it has one), and how long ago it arrived.
- Clicking a notification marks it read and, when it carries a link, takes you there (the project, the review stream, your profile, …).
- Mark all read appears whenever the list holds unread items and clears your whole unread count at once.
Read state is kept on your account, not the device: reading on your phone clears it on the web too. There's no delete — notifications simply age down the list.
What kinds of events appear
The bell entry is created for every notification the platform sends you. The ones end users meet most:
| Area | Examples |
|---|---|
| Account & security | welcome, email verification, password reset, password changed, passkey added / removed, Hugging Face token saved, account deactivated / reactivated, device account linked to the cloud |
| Organizations | invited, added / removed, role changed, suspended, auto-suspend warning, org deleted, ownership transferred |
| Projects & review | added / removed / role changed on a project, reviewer assignments, Review complete rollups on your work, Re-review requested (for reviewers), auto-paused on quality, inactivity reminder |
| Consent | signature receipt, consent withdrawn, new consent required |
| Money | rate card changed, payout queued / paid / cancelled |
| Operational (owners, creators) | storage sync failure, webhook failure, ML backend error |
Bodies carry context so you can tell at a glance what a notification is about: Organization: … and, when someone else acted, Invited by: …, Changed by: …, or By: ….
The complete event list, with recipients, is in Notifications & email events.
How this relates to email
Email is a copy of some bell entries, never the other way round. Whether a given event also emails you is decided in order:
-
the platform's own rules (the operator's master email switch and per-event rules);
-
your Email volume on Profile → Preferences:
Profile Emails you get Everything (default) every notification the platform rules allow Essential skips the chatty ones (review assignments, inactivity nudges…); membership, review outcomes, money and security still email Critical only only security alerts, account changes, consent receipts and payouts Security, consent and payout emails send on every profile. Suppressed emails stay in the bell.
-
your Email digest (Off / Daily / Weekly, also on Preferences) is separate — a periodic summary mail that doesn't change which per-event mails you receive.
See Your account → Preferences for the two controls.
Gotchas
- The desktop app has no bell. Notifications are written by cloud-side actions into the cloud and aren't mirrored to the desktop's local database, so the desktop hides the bell rather than show an empty list forever. The same events reach you by email and in the web app.
- Notifications are yours, not per organization. Switching organization doesn't change the list — use the organization pill on each entry to tell them apart.
- Mobile, on a flaky link. The app replays the last-seen unread count rather than showing zero when a refresh fails, so the badge doesn't blink away real notifications.
- Old clients and real-time streaming. There is no live push; the badge polls. A stale client trying the retired streaming endpoint gets a 410 and falls back to polling.
- Mark all read is scoped to the labeling app's notifications (other AfriAnnotate surfaces keep their own bell).
What's next
- Your account → — email volume and digest settings on the Preferences tab
- Notifications & email events → — every event, who receives it, the operator's controls
- Rejected work → — what the review rollup notification is telling you