Notifications & Push

1. Getting the first push on your phone

SkyView creates a set of default notification rules when it is installed — one each for object detection, zone enter, zone leave, fall, baby cry, gesture recognition, face recognition, package arrival and package taken. You do not have to write a rule first; all you have to do is bind your phone to your account.

1. 1

   Sign in to the app with your account

   Where: open the SkyView app on your phone. What to do: enter the server address and sign in with the same username and password you use for the web admin, then stay on screen for a few seconds. How you know it worked: web admin → Settings → My account → My devices lists this phone, and "Last seen" says just now.

2. 2

   Allow system notifications

   Where: your phone's system settings → Apps → SkyView → Notifications. What to do: make sure the notification switch is on, with banners and sound allowed. How you know it worked: the system settings show SkyView's notifications as allowed.

3. 3

   Send a test push

   Where: web admin → Settings → Users, then open your own account. What to do: click "Send test push". How you know it worked: the page says "Test push sent to N device(s)" and a notification marked as a test pops up on your phone.

Verify

Walk up to a camera, stand there for two or three seconds, then walk away. Within a minute your phone should get a notification, and the same event should be in the Event Center. Both = you are set up. Event but no notification = jump straight to the last section of this page.

2. The gates a push has to pass

From the moment it is detected to the moment it lands on your phone, an event passes the gates below in order; if any one of them blocks, nothing rings. Knowing the order saves you from guessing when something goes wrong.

1. A rule matches: only rules in Automations send phone notifications. A default rule you delete is not put back automatically.
2. The rule's cooldown has passed: one rule pushes only once per cooldown window, so the same thing does not flood you.
3. The event tier is not Low: events set to Low are only written to the database — nothing on the phone, nothing popping up in the browser, and no automation rule fires either (announcements, channel messages and webhooks are all skipped).
4. You are among the rule's recipients: a rule with no recipients named goes to everyone in the family.
5. You are not in quiet hours or temporarily muted: personal settings win over the global ones, and a rule can also declare itself exempt from quiet hours.
6. Your push preferences do not filter it out: you can subscribe to just a few cameras and a few event types.
7. Your account may view that camera: admins may view all of them by default.
8. Your phone's system lets SkyView post notifications.

3. Quiet hours

Quiet hours come in three layers, from broad to specific:

1. 1

   Set quiet hours for the household

   Where: Settings → Notifications. What to do: fill in "Quiet hours start" and "Quiet hours end", HH:MM 24-hour, then click "Save settings". How you know it worked: refresh the page and both boxes still hold the times you entered.

2. 2

   Set your own quiet hours

   Where: Settings → My account → Push preferences. What to do: fill in "My quiet hours" and click "Save preferences". How you know it worked: the page says "Preferences saved". Leave it empty and you follow the household setting.

3. 3

   Go quiet for a while

   Where: the same page. What to do: click "Mute 1h" or "Mute tonight". How you know it worked: the top of the panel reads "Currently muted until …". To come back early, click "Unmute".

If ticking one rule at a time is too much work, there is an easier route: demote the noisy event types as a whole — see the next section.

4. Event tiers: what reaches your phone, what is only recorded

The noisiest events in a home are usually Motion detection, Zone Leave and Zone Empty. Rather than deleting rules one by one, give each event type a tier.

1. 1

   Open the tier settings

   Where: Settings → Notifications. What to do: expand "Event tiers (per-type push intensity)". How you know it worked: "Default push tier" and "Per-type overrides" appear.

2. 2

   Demote the noisy events to Low

   What to do: under "Per-type overrides", set Motion detection, Zone Leave and Zone Empty to "Low (database only)". How you know it worked: save, refresh the page, and those three are still Low.

3. 3

   Keep the important events at High

   What to do: check that Face recognition, Fall detection and Package Arrived are "High (all channels)" or left at the default. How you know it worked: those events in the Event Center still come with a notification.

5. Different notifications for each member of the family

When each family member signs in to the app with their own account, they each decide what they receive. The admin only has to create the account and grant the cameras that person should see.

1. 1

   Create an account for a family member

   Where: Settings → Users. What to do: create the account, pick a role, and tick the cameras they may see. How you know it worked: the person appears in the user list.

2. 2

   Have them sign in on the app once

   What to do: they sign in on the phone app with their own account. How you know it worked: open them under Users and their linked devices are listed.

3. 3

   Everyone tunes their own push preferences

   Where: they sign in to the web admin themselves → Settings → My account → Push preferences. What to do: under "Subscribed cameras" tick only the cameras they care about; under "Subscribed events" tick only the types they care about, say just Face and Fall. How you know it worked: after saving, the page says "Preferences saved". Nothing ticked in either box = receive everything.

4. 4

   Verify

   Where: Settings → Users → open that person. What to do: click "Send test push". How you know it worked: the test notification arrives on their phone.

6. Sending to a DingTalk / WeCom / Feishu group

Besides the phone app, SkyView can send events to the group chats and third-party push apps you already use — DingTalk, WeCom, Feishu, Bark, ServerChan, Telegram, Discord, Slack, Synology Chat, VoceChat, plus the custom-enterprise-app kind: Feishu app / WeCom app / DingTalk app. Credentials go in once under Settings → Notifications → Notification channels; after that every rule simply picks one, and rotating a key is a one-place change.

1. 1

   Add a channel

   Where: Settings → Notifications, scroll down to "Notification channels". What to do: click "Add channel" and pick a type. How you know it worked: the form for that type appears, every field says underneath where to get the credential, and there is an "Official docs" link next to it.

2. 2

   Fill in the credentials

   What to do: give the channel a name you will recognize (say "Living room DingTalk group") and fill in the fields as the hints describe. Anything folded away under "Advanced options" can wait. How you know it worked: with the required fields filled in, "Save" becomes clickable.

3. 3

   Test

   What to do: after saving, click "Test" in the channel list. How you know it worked: it says "Test message sent" and the matching group or app receives a message. If it fails: click "Show details" for the HTTP status and the raw response — a mistyped key, a missing signature, an IP that is not allowlisted: all three are obvious here.

4. 4

   Use it in a rule

   Where: Automations → open a rule or create one → Add action. What to do: pick "Send to a notification channel" and choose the one you just made under "Channel"; if you like, add a title and message text and tick "Attach event snapshot" or "Notify everyone (@all)". How you know it worked: save the rule, click "Test" on it, and the message lands in the group.

Where each provider's credentials come from, and whether pictures can come along, at a glance. The form repeats the same hints under every field; this table is here so you can pick the easiest one first.

7. Seeing the picture right in the notification

By default a notification is one line of text. Turn on the items below and you know what happened without opening anything. All three live under Settings → Notifications.

1. 1

   Show the picture in notifications

   What to do: turn on "Show the picture in notifications". How you know it worked: the next event notification carries a close-up of what was detected. Note: on Android the picture needs a public HTTPS domain; on a LAN-only setup Android gets no image, while iPhone is unaffected.

2. 2

   Android: see the picture even while collapsed

   What to do: turn on "Show the picture and AI description in the notification itself". How you know it worked: the Android notification shows a thumbnail while collapsed and the full picture when expanded. iPhone always behaves that way and is unaffected by this switch.

3. 3

   Update the notification once the AI description is ready

   What to do: turn on "Update the notification once the AI summary is ready". How you know it worked: a few seconds later the notification turns from "Someone at the door" into something more specific, without buzzing again and without adding a second notification. Requires: the AI description switched on first under Settings → AI Summary.

8. There is an event but no notification

Work through the order below; each step says exactly where to look. In the vast majority of cases the first three steps find it.

1. 1

   First confirm the channel itself is open

   Settings → Users → open your own account → "Send test push". It arrives = the channel is fine, keep going down this list. It does not = check whether this phone is listed under My account → My devices, and whether the phone's system notification permission is off; if need be, sign out and back in inside the app.

2. 2

   Confirm the event really happened

   Look for that moment in the Event Center. No event = this is a detection problem, not a push problem; read the AI Detection guide instead.

3. 3

   The group or third-party app got nothing

   Settings → Notifications → Notification channels: look at that channel's "Last result" first. If it shows a failure, click "Test", then "Show details" to see what came back. Also check that the channel is Enabled and that the rule really points at this channel — once a channel is deleted, the rule asks you to choose again.

4. 4

   Check the tier of this event type

   Settings → Notifications → Event tiers. Events set to "Low (database only)" are not pushed, and the browser does not pop them up either.

5. 5

   Check whether a rule covers this event type

   Automations: look for a rule whose trigger includes this event type. A default rule you delete is not put back automatically — just create it again.

6. 6

   Check the rule's cooldown

   Open that rule and look at the cooldown. If a notification of the same kind has just gone out, nothing is pushed again until the cooldown ends. The rule's run history does not record how often it was skipped by cooldown or quiet hours, so "the history is empty" does not mean the rule is not working.

7. 7

   Check quiet hours and temporary mute

   Settings → My account → Push preferences: make sure you are not muted, and that quiet hours do not happen to cover that moment.

8. 8

   Check your own push preferences

   Same page: once "Subscribed cameras" or "Subscribed events" has anything ticked, everything outside that selection is not pushed.

9. 9

   Check the camera permissions

   Settings → Users: confirm this account may view that camera. Events from a camera someone has no access to are never pushed to them.

Related guides

• Automation — writing rules, adding conditions, setting up bot channels
• AI Detection — where events come from and how to cut false positives
• Client Apps — what the phone app and the browser are each good for
• Troubleshooting — will not install, will not connect, no picture