Notifications and alerts

Pilot EFB Desk is quiet until you switch something on. The bell in the top bar is the inbox for everything the app noticed - a new critical NOTAM at a watched field, a forecast that slipped below VFR, a currency window closing

• and every switch behind it lives in Settings > Notifications. An alert is a pointer to the module it names, never the data itself: the settings page says so in its own words, "This is not continuous or dispatch-grade monitoring. Missing weather or fields never means conditions are clear."

Find your way around

The bell sits in the top bar's utility cluster, beside the theme and shortcuts buttons. Its badge counts unread alerts, and its accessible name reads "Notifications, 6 unread" when there are six. Click it for the Alerts panel; click Open notifications at the foot of that panel for the full page.

The queue reads from this browser only. If it cannot be read, a band says "Could not load alerts" with "Nothing was changed. This feed reads from this device only - try again." and a Retry button, and the header drops its "All caught up" claim until the read succeeds.

How to work the queue

1. Click the bell. Unread rows are marked as such; click a row to open the module it points to - the NOTAM detail, the station, the duty. The panel shuts on its own when you navigate, and opening the Guided tours panel closes it.
2. To clear the badge without opening anything, click Mark all read in the panel header.
3. Click Open notifications for the desk. Read the Needs action band first, then click a chip (WX, NOTAMs, Duty, Ops) or Unread only to narrow the queue. A chip with nothing behind it shows an explicit empty state rather than a blank panel, and that empty state is never an all-clear for weather or NOTAMs.
4. Click a row to select it. The detail pane fills with its full text, when it was raised and its state, and "Why you are seeing this" - one honest sentence per producer, with the lead times the code itself uses. Click the row's link chip, press Enter, or use the pane's primary button to open the module.
5. Work the queue from the keyboard: J and K (or the arrows) move, Enter opens, E flips read and unread, Backspace or Delete dismisses, and 1 to 5 pick a chip - while no field has focus. The revealed action cluster on a row carries Mark as read, Mark as unread and Delete; a deleted row can be undone from the banner that follows.
6. Click Clear read to delete read alerts from before today. A dialog asks "Delete 4 read alerts from before today? Unread alerts are kept." before anything goes; Clear confirms.
7. Click Alert settings to jump to Settings > Notifications.

How to turn on notifications in this browser

1. Open Settings > Notifications. The first step, "1 · Where alerts reach you", holds four cards: This browser, Email digest, Product emails and Phone.
2. Read the This browser chip: Granted, Not asked yet, Blocked or Unsupported. While it reads Not asked yet, the card says "Your browser will ask the first time you turn a reminder on below or enable browser notifications." The app never asks on page load; it asks from your click.
3. Under While tabs are closed, click Enable browser notifications. Allow the browser's prompt. The cell flips to On with "On - this browser can receive notifications while its tabs are closed." and the line "This browser is registered for notifications."
4. Click Send a test alert under Permission. The result reads "Test alert sent - it should appear now. If nothing shows, check your system notification settings for this browser."
5. If the chip reads Blocked, the card spells out the steps for the browser you are using, then Check again re-reads the permission once you have changed it. Private and Incognito windows usually cannot show notifications at all.

Once this browser holds a registration, a second This browser panel appears under the cards with NOTAM ALERTS ON THIS BROWSER (CRITICAL ONLY or critical and high) and Quiet hours on this browser with From and Until hours. Those apply to this browser's subscription only; each signed-in browser keeps its own. Turn off browser notifications removes the registration again.

How to choose what you get

1. Under "2 · What you get", the Reminders table lists seven rows in two groups, Flying and Duty: Currency expiring, Credential expiring, Crew rest complete, Pinned NOTAM expiry, Finish your plan, Brief your duty and Complete your flight. Each row shows its Next fire, or "Not armed". Reminders are scheduled locally on this device, so they need the browser permission above.
2. Set the Pinned NOTAM lead time - "How far ahead of a pinned NOTAM's expiry to fire."
3. In Location alerts, switch on NOTAM alerts ("On - critical and high NOTAMs at your watched locations.") and Weather alerts. The four weather alert types sit beneath the master: Below-VFR reports, TAF amendments & corrections, Improved to VFR and Personal minimum breaches. These switches apply to your account; other devices follow after they sync.
4. Read Watched locations - a read-only glance at the synced lists, with Muted and FIR tags. Click Choose locations to edit them.
5. Under Location alerts, set Where each alert family goes: a grid of the two families - NOTAM alerts ("New critical and high NOTAMs at your watched locations.") and Weather alerts ("Below-VFR, worsened and amended-TAF reports at your watched stations.") - against three channels, Phone, Browser and Digest, every switch on to begin with. Routing only decides where a family goes once its master switch and the channel's own registration are on, so you can keep NOTAM alerts off a laptop without unsubscribing the browser and losing weather there. A family routed off the digest is recapped as unwatched. The setting is per account; Watch Desk rules keep their own per-rule channels.
6. In Quiet hours, turn on Defer non-urgent reminders and set the window. "Crew rest fires even during quiet hours - it marks your earliest report time after minimum rest."

The Turn everything off panel at the foot switches every reminder and alert off, cancels scheduled alerts and clears alert history; the dialog spells out exactly that before you confirm with Turn off all.

How to edit the alert locations

The NOTAM alerts and Weather alerts pages are full editors of the same synced watch lists the iOS app uses - what you change here reaches your phone after its next sync.

1. Open Settings > Notifications and click Choose locations beside Location alerts. The NOTAM alerts page opens. Switch on New NOTAM alerts - "Notifies you when a new critical or high NOTAM appears at a watched airport, FIR, or your home base."
2. Pick the Default alert level: Critical + high or Critical only. Every watched location alerts at this level unless its own row overrides it.
3. Read Watched airports and Watched FIRs. Each row carries its source tags, a switch, and its own alert level picker (Default, Critical + high, Critical only). Turning a row's switch off mutes it and adds a Muted pill.
4. Under Add alert-only watch, type in "Search airport or FIR - e.g. EGLL, London, OIIX" and click Add on a result. Alert-only watches notify you about a location without adding it to Brief or favourites, up to 20 airports and 20 FIRs. Turning an alert-only row off removes it - the row says "Alert-only watch - turning alerts off removes it from this list."
5. The weather alert types are the four switches under Weather alerts on Settings > Notifications. Per-row weather mutes live on the separate Weather alerts page, which has no button of its own on the Desk yet: open it at app.pilotefb.com/settings/weather-alerts. It carries Weather alert notifications, the Alert types - Below VFR, TAF amendments & corrections, Improved to VFR and Personal minimum breaches - and a Personal minimums row for the thresholds.
6. Its Watched airports list is the same set (home base, Brief stations, favourites and alert-only watches, shared with NOTAM alerts); Open NOTAM alerts at its foot goes back to the NOTAM side. Muting a row silences its weather notifications only; weather data stays fully visible everywhere.

How to get the daily email digest

1. In Settings > Notifications, find the Email digest card.
2. Switch on Daily email digest. The row reads "On - one recap email a day, sent around 06:00 (UTC)."
3. Set Send hour (UTC) with -1h and +1h. "The hour is UTC, not local time - the digest arrives within that hour."

The digest recaps your watched weather stations and NOTAM locations only. It is informational - not an alerting or operational briefing channel, and a missing report or empty section never means conditions are clear. Every digest includes a link back to this card to stop it.

The Product emails card beside it is a separate question: one switch, off by default, for occasional tips by email, which you can stop at any time. The digest does not depend on it.

Watch Desk delivery

Alerts from your Watch Desk rules ride the same channels, with their own controls on this page. A browser notification for a rule alert opens that event on the Watch Desk and offers Acknowledge beside Open. Rule email quiet window holds your rules' batched emails (sent at most every 15 minutes) inside a UTC window and sends them as one batch when it ends - "Nothing is dropped." Which rules email you at all is set per rule on the Watch Desk. Watch Desk escalation adds one repeat push, 30 minutes after a critical Watch Desk event was recorded, if nobody has acknowledged it on any device - never a second reminder, never below critical, never after 24 hours. Acknowledging the event on the Watch Desk, on any device, stands the reminder down.

On iPhone and iPad

The Phone card on the desk says it plainly: Pilot EFB does not list your registered devices on this screen. New NOTAM and weather alerts, when enabled, arrive as server-sent pushes on your signed-in iPhone or iPad, and per-location mutes and alert levels you set here apply there too. The home screen widget, the duty Live Activity and the Apple Watch app are iOS only; Notifications & Widgets on iPhone covers them.

Troubleshooting

The bell never changes. Alerts land in the queue only when a master switch is on and there is a watched location behind it. Check Location alerts and the Watched locations list, and that you are signed in.

A NOTAM alert reached my phone but not this browser. Read Where each alert family goes: the NOTAM family may be routed off the Browser channel on your account. Flip its Browser switch back on; the browser's own registration under This browser has to be on as well.

A band says "Notifications are off". This browser has not granted the permission, so alerts appear only in the feed. Click Turn on notifications in the band, or go to Settings > Notifications and read the This browser card; a Blocked chip lists the steps for your browser.

"While tabs are closed" reads Unsupported or Unavailable. The browser does not support Web Push, or the app's service worker is not active in this session. Alerts continue to arrive on your signed-in iPhone or iPad; open the production web app in a normal window to register this browser.

A watched row shows "Not alerting". The row is watched and unmuted but outside your alert allowance, so nothing fires for it. The list says so on the row itself rather than reading as coverage it does not have.

The digest arrived at the wrong time. The send hour is UTC, not local, and the email arrives within that hour rather than on the minute.

Where next

• Watch Desk - the rules and the recorded timeline behind server-side alerts.
• NOTAMs - where a NOTAM alert lands, with the raw text and the decode.
• Weather - the station readout an alert points at.
• Settings and sync - home base, sign-in and how these switches reach your other devices.