If nothing at all is reaching your phone, don't worry — this is almost always a phone setting rather than something broken in your account. Work through the checks below in order; most people are fixed by the first three.
Jump to:
- What to check first
- If some alerts arrive but others don't
- If it's a tracker alert you're missing
- If you reinstalled or cleared app data
- You haven't missed anything
- Still nothing?
What to check first
- Make sure you're logged in. Ask A Vet only registers your phone for alerts after you log in. If you're signed out, that phone receives nothing. Log in and leave the app open for a moment.
- Check that notification permission is granted. This is the single most common cause. Ask A Vet never warns you in-app when notifications are blocked — a refusal is silent — so it's worth checking even if you think you allowed it. - iPhone: Settings → Notifications → Ask A Vet → turn Allow Notifications on. - Android: Settings → Apps → Ask A Vet → Notifications → turn notifications on. On Android 13 and newer, notification permission is asked for separately from everything else, so it's easy to dismiss by accident.
- Reopen the app afterwards. After granting permission, fully close and reopen Ask A Vet. Your phone can only be registered while the app is running with permission granted. Logging out and back in also does the job.
[CONFIRM: whether any phone brands' battery-optimisation or "restricted app" settings need to be adjusted, and the steps to do so.]
If some alerts arrive but others don't
Check the category (Android)
Ask A Vet uses seven separate notification categories, and any of them can be muted on its own. Check General, Tracker Alarms, Telehealth Appointments, Family Invitations, Family Updates, QR Tag Scans and App & Device Updates. Calendar reminders, chat messages and subscription alerts all arrive under General.
Important: Tracker Alarms ("Safety, fence, and battery alarms from your GPS tracker") controls both the alerts we send you over the internet and the alerts your phone picks up directly from the collar over Bluetooth. Switching that one category off silences both.
Check the feature's own settings
Some alerts only exist if you've switched the feature on:
- Temperature alerts — the Cold alert and Hot alert switches, in the pet's GPS tracker settings.
- Barking alerts — sensitivity and schedule, in the pet's GPS tracker settings.
- Zone alerts — you only get "left/arrived" alerts for areas you've actually marked as a virtual fence.
- Calendar reminders — an event set to Never sends nothing.
If the pet is shared with you
Alerts for a shared pet depend on the permissions the pet's owner has given you. Zone, hazard and other tracker alerts need Location Tracking; calendar reminders need Calendar. Battery, charging, power, temperature and barking alerts always go to the tracker's owner only — family members will never see them.
Was the alert simply held back?
Alerts have deliberate repeat limits, so a second alert may not be missing — just filtered out.
| Alert | How often you can be told |
|---|---|
| Barking, charging and battery | One every 5 minutes |
| Separation Anxiety Monitor at the same level | One every 30 minutes |
| Cold and hot-warning temperature | Once an hour |
| Dangerously hot temperature | Once every 30 minutes |
If it's a tracker alert you're missing
Check the tracker can actually reach us
Open your pet's tracker status. If it shows Tracker off or Tracker can't reach the network, the collar isn't sending anything to alert you about.
| Status | What it means | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Tracker off | "The tracker's battery may be empty." | Charge it. |
| Can't reach the network | "The tracker is on but has no mobile network connection." | This usually resolves itself when your pet moves back into coverage. |
Two known limitations
If you force-quit the app on iPhone:
Important: On iPhone, force-quitting the Ask A Vet app stops it waking up in the background to deliver alerts the collar sends over Bluetooth. Leave the app running in the background rather than swiping it away.
If the collar was out of range when it happened:
Please note: If the collar has no mobile signal and your phone is out of Bluetooth range at the moment something happens, that alert is not replayed once the connection comes back. It's a limitation of the collar itself.
If you reinstalled or cleared app data
When your phone stops accepting alerts — after an uninstall, a data clear, or a very long gap — its registration is removed permanently so we don't keep trying. Signing in again on that phone re-registers it. Nothing is lost.
You haven't missed anything
Even when a push notification can't be delivered, the alert is still recorded. Open the app, go to the Home tab and tap the bell icon to see the full list.
Still nothing?
Go to Settings → Help and send us a support request. Include your version number from Settings → About us, your phone model, and roughly when you last received an alert. If it's a tracker alert you're missing, tell us your pet's name too — and check first that permission is granted, the category is on, the tracker shows as connected and you've waited past the repeat limits above.
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