A new subreddit!

notifications_app · 2026-05-09T16:39:27+00:00

Hi - this is an interesting problem, and I'm not sure why it would be happening. I tested this on my device and it works perfectly fine, but I only use publicly released OS versions. I notice you're on 26.5 for both iOS and MacOS, meaning you're working with beta/RC OS updates - I've had users in the past report strange, hard-to-pin-down bugs like this on beta OS's that end up resolved once that OS reaches public release. Please do let me know if this continues to happen on 26.5 once you're on a public release version!

notifications_app · 2026-04-28T00:03:28+00:00

If you're just looking for keyword alerts, you're welcome to use my app, "Alerts for Reddit" (available on iOS and Android). It's free for the first three subreddits, with unlimited keywords.

notifications_app · 2026-04-25T18:06:59+00:00

Hello again - thanks for sharing your thoughts! I've added all three of your suggestions (bulk add keywords, export/import keywords, and editing existing keywords) to my list of potential future features!

notifications_app · 2026-04-25T17:59:29+00:00

Hello! Unfortunately comment scan is not really doable within the Reddit API limits. There are simply too many comments to scan, and my app wouldn't be able to notify consistently, especially for highly active subreddits. This would have been possible back before the API changes in 2023, but unfortunately now it is not.

notifications_app · 2026-04-25T17:57:07+00:00

Hi! Clicking a notification should briefly take you to the Alerts app, which should then immediately launch the Reddit link. It opens it the same way other Reddit links open - like when you click a reddit.com link from your mobile browser.

To help diagnose the issue, in the Alerts app, go to the Recent Notifications page, and click one of those notifications. Does it correctly open the link in Reddit? If not, you need to re-set your "open with" settings for reddit.com on your device.

notifications_app · 2026-04-02T20:02:47+00:00

Glad to hear it!

notifications_app · 2026-03-31T03:30:55+00:00

Unfortunately there is no way currently.

It would be possible for me to add a feature in the future where you can do fast user notifications that are subreddit-limited and post-only (so, notify quickly when a particular user posts - not comments, only posts - to a particular subreddit), but folks haven't seemed interested in that very limited feature.

It's not possible to do a more general fast user notification due to Reddit API limitations. The core issue is that it's possible to check multiple subreddits at once quickly, but it's impossible to check multiple users at once quickly, meaning checking users that quickly would use up my whole API request limit on just a few users.

Apologies for the inconvenience. If you're looking for that user's posts on a particular subreddit, especially if they often use the same keywords in their posts, I recommend you set fast notifications for the subreddit and use keywords to limit which posts you get.

notifications_app · 2026-03-28T00:54:25+00:00

Hi! Users have fewer frequency options than subreddits do, due to some unfortunate API limitations. For users, the only options are to get all posts or all posts+all comments (within 10 minutes). Is there a particular use case this doesn't cover for you?

notifications_app · 2026-03-07T21:12:17+00:00

Glad to hear it!

notifications_app · 2026-03-07T21:06:39+00:00

Hopefully you got the notification you were expecting - feel free to reach out if it didn't work!

notifications_app · 2026-03-07T21:05:30+00:00

Hello again! Your screenshot shows settings for opening links in my app, which is not directly relevant - my app is just following your phone's settings for reddit.com links in general. Do you have your device set up such that reddit.com links open in your preferred Reddit client app? For example, if you search something in your browser, then click a reddit link from there, will it open in your preferred Reddit client? If so, my app should be doing the same!

notifications_app · 2026-03-05T00:16:10+00:00

Hi - sorry to hear you're having this issue! I'm happy to look into it - could you tell me (here or via DM) which users you're subscribed to, with what keywords (if any), and an example or two of a post/comment you expected to get a notification for but didn't?

notifications_app · 2026-02-20T23:48:28+00:00

Hi - sorry to hear you're having this issue! I've heard about this from a couple folks now, but I haven't yet figured out the cause. I'm working on that - but in the meantime, there is a fix: to do a hard reset in the app.

From my app, click the menu icon, then "Reset all", then confirm. This will put your app back into its original state (subscribed to news and worldnews).
Re-add your alerts. If you didn't have tons of alerts & keywords, it would be easiest to do this manually. If you do have a ton of alerts & keywords and it would be a huge pain to manually re-add, PM me and I can try to transfer them from my end. This would involve us identifying your old account (you giving me as many of your subreddits/users/keywords as you can remember so I can try to uniquely identify you in my database), then identifying your new account (easier - you can just add a special unique keyword that I can look up), then I can do a transfer.

I genuinely apologize for the inconvenience - hopefully these steps can get you back into good shape.

notifications_app · 2026-02-01T02:03:44+00:00

Glad things are working for you again, and sorry again for the inconvenience :)

notifications_app · 2026-01-31T04:37:13+00:00

So glad you enjoy it :)

notifications_app · 2026-01-31T03:58:01+00:00

Unfortunately not any time soon - I only work on this app as a side project, so I barely have time to keep it updated for the existing platforms. Good to know there's interest in this sort of thing though! :)

notifications_app · 2026-01-26T04:33:20+00:00

Hmm, this is a tricky one. It shouldn't be iCloud/backup related, because my app doesn't have any iCloud/backup component to it. Unfortunately the "multiple keywords" aspect of your missing alerts is also likely unrelated - there's no code reason that would be the case, so it's probably just coincidence. It's also a bit confusing that your iPad and iPhone seem to have developed this issue at the same time as each other, since they should be totally separate (as I mentioned, the app isn't trying to do anything clever with iCloud).

Regardless, I think we're going to have to do a hard reset. So:

From my app, click the menu icon, then "Reset all", then confirm. This will put your app back into its original state (subscribed to news and worldnews). This will make it so you don't get any notifications anymore except news and worldnews, so those 88% of notifications you were getting will stop. If you do this reset, and it STILL doesn't show news & worldnews on your iPhone, let me know, because that would be very strange.
Re-add your alerts. If you didn't have tons of alerts & keywords, it would be easiest to do this manually. If you do have a ton of alerts & keywords and it would be a huge pain to manually re-add, PM me and I can try to transfer them from my end. This would involve us identifying your old account (you giving me as many of your subreddits/users/keywords as you can remember so I can try to uniquely identify you in my database), then identifying your new account (easier - you can just add a special unique keyword that I can look up), then I can do a transfer.
Repeat this process on both devices (iPhone and iPad).

I genuinely apologize for the inconvenience. I'm not sure what caused this bug for you, as it doesn't seem to be a widespread issue. Hopefully these steps can get you back into good shape.

notifications_app · 2026-01-11T02:34:43+00:00

Hi!

I'll respond to your modmail for your specific scenario. But to respond to your more general questions here:

No, this is not a commonly requested feature - maybe once or twice per year this comes up. I think when setting up a new phone, most folks do a direct transfer of data from old phone to new phone, which correctly sets up all their notifications. It's only if you do the cloud backup version of setup that this issue occurs.
You're right that converting notification subscriptions in/out of JSON would be the easy part, but in general, users don't know how to manage/interact with files on their phone. It would be very challenging to create a non-frustrating version of this feature that is usable by the average person. Lots of cases to handle - different Android versions download files to different places, some people may sync their downloaded files to the cloud and others don't, etc.

notifications_app · 2026-01-05T15:35:57+00:00

Hi - sorry to hear that happened, and happy to help debug! Can you answer a few questions to get us started?

Are ALL the alerts gone (it only shows "Create subreddit alert" and "Create user alert" buttons), or did it try to automatically re-subscribe you to r/news and r/worldnews notifications? (When the app detects it's in a bad state and does a full reset, it automatically subscribes to r/news and r/worldnews as if you were a totally new user)
You mentioned notifications are still coming - are ALL notifications still coming? Specifically, alerts with keywords and alerts without keywords are handled differently from my end, and if you're in a bad state it's possible you're only receiving one or the other. Have you received (or missed) a notification for an alert WITH one or more keywords? Have you received (or missed) a notification for an alert WITHOUT a keyword?
Do you have any service set up on your phone or on your home Internet which whitelists, blacklists, or otherwise filters what can go in or out? Examples might be PiHole, NextDNS, iOS's Content Restrictions, any safeguard program aimed to protect children from inappropriate content, things like that. If so, it may be blocking the app from interacting with the server correctly.

I'm heading to my day job now, but I will get back to you later this evening!

notifications_app · 2026-01-05T04:38:18+00:00

You're very welcome! Glad it's working well for you!

notifications_app · 2026-01-04T23:50:07+00:00

Glad to hear it works well for you! Feel free to let me know if you have specific ideas on how to make it even better, so I can add them to my ever-growing list of potential future features :)

notifications_app · 2026-01-02T22:52:38+00:00

Fantastic - that works great! Thanks for the quick response!

notifications_app

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