Pilot EFB is quiet by default. Nothing pings you until you switch it on, and when something does, it is always the same kind of message: a personal tap on the shoulder saying something changed - come and look. This chapter covers the whole notification system - the bell and its feed, the alert types the app can raise, the switches that control them - and the two surfaces that live outside the app entirely: the home and lock screen widgets and the duty Live Activity.

The bell and the feed

Every screen in the app carries a bell in the top-right corner of its header, with a badge counting unread alerts. Tap it anywhere and you land on Notifications - the feed of everything the app has raised, newest first, split into Today and Earlier.

The Notifications feed: title Notifications with 4 unread and a Mark all read button, filter chips All, WX, NOTAMs, Duty and Ops, then a Today section holding an Offline map packs removed notice and an Earlier section with Offline map data ready and Home base offline map ready notices, each carrying an Open offline maps button — The feed behind the bell: every alert the app raised, filterable by type, each row a doorway.

The feed is built for triage. Filter chips - All, WX, NOTAMs, Duty, Ops - narrow it by type, each with its own unread count. A row that points somewhere carries an open button that deep-links straight to the thing it is about: a NOTAM alert opens that station's NOTAMs, a currency alert opens the rule, a duty reminder opens the Duty tab. Swipe a row for read/unread and delete, use Mark all read to clear the badge in one tap (with an Undo bar in case), and the overflow menu can clear read alerts older than today. Everything in the feed lives on your device.

You will also meet housekeeping notices here - the frame above shows the app reporting offline map downloads finishing, and iOS reclaiming one. Same contract: each is a pointer into the screen where you can act.

What the app can alert you about

Two families, with different jobs:

Location alerts watch the airports and FIRs you care about - your home base, Brief stations, favourites, and alert-only watches. NOTAM alerts notify you when a new critical or high NOTAM appears at a watched location, at your chosen severity level; the NOTAMs chapter shows the screen where you configure them and the keyword highlights. Weather alerts cover Below VFR, TAF amendments and corrections, Improved to VFR, and personal-minimum breaches at watched airports; the Weather chapter covers that screen and the personal minimums behind it.

Reminders are about your own flying admin, scheduled on the device: Currency expiring (fires 30, 7 and 1 day before a rule expires), Credential expiring (same rhythm for medicals, licences and ratings), Crew rest complete (when minimum rest ends after a duty), Pinned NOTAM expiry (a configurable number of hours before a NOTAM you pinned lapses), and three briefing nudges - Finish your plan, Brief your duty the evening before, and Complete your flight when a duty ends with a folder still active. There is also a per-duty report-time reminder you arm on the duty itself, in the Duty & FTL tab.

The control room

Everything above is driven from one screen: Settings > Notifications. It opens with the iOS permission - its real status, a button into iOS Settings when it is off, and a Send a test alert button so you can prove the pipeline end to end before you rely on it.

The Settings Notifications screen: an iOS notification permission card marked Granted with a Send a test alert button, Location alerts rows reading NOTAM alerts, on for critical and high NOTAMs, and Weather alerts, off, a caption about watched airports and FIRs, then the top of the Reminders list with Currency expiring and Credential expiring toggles — The control room: permission status with a test button, location alerts, then the reminder switches.

Every reminder is a plain switch with a caption saying exactly when it fires - and once it is on, a "Next:" line telling you the next scheduled time, so nothing is a mystery. A single Turn off all notifications button at the bottom of the list switches every reminder and alert off and clears the history.

Quiet hours holds back the non-urgent reminders - currency and pinned-NOTAM - until the window ends. One deliberate exception, stated on the screen: "Crew rest fires even during quiet hours - it marks your earliest report time after minimum rest."

Further down the Notifications screen: the Complete your flight reminder toggle, a Turn off all notifications button, the Quiet hours card with a Defer non-urgent reminders switch and start 22:00 and end 07:00 time fields, the note that crew rest fires even during quiet hours, and a closing caption explaining reminders are scheduled locally while NOTAM and weather alerts can also arrive as server push — Quiet hours defer the non-urgent reminders - and the foot of the screen says how delivery works.

The foot of the screen states the delivery model verbatim: "Reminders are scheduled locally on this device. NOTAM and weather alerts, when enabled, are also sent by our server as push notifications and can arrive while the app is closed." That is the whole topology - your admin reminders never leave the phone; the location alerts can follow you when you are signed in with alerts on. On the free tier, alerts cover one watched location - the alert screens say so themselves, and add that viewing NOTAMs or weather for any airport stays free and unlimited; Pro alerts on every location you watch.

Widgets

One widget, many faces. The Pilot EFB widget comes in small, medium and large for the home screen, plus a rectangle for the lock screen, and every copy you place is its own instance: touch and hold it, tap Edit Widget (iOS 17 or later), and pick which airport it follows - your home base, the airports on today's duty, or a saved airport - and what each row shows. Rows can be a duty (FDP) countdown, METAR, TAF, runway wind, sunrise and sunset, a Zulu clock, your most urgent currency item, your next flight - or Automatic, which shows the duty countdown while you are on duty and a Zulu clock otherwise.

The large Pilot EFB widget: header Pilot EFB with London Heathrow Airport and an EGLL chip, an FDP left row reading 5:09:10 and In limits over a used 4:00 of 10:00 progress bar, a Zulu row reading 21:03Z with home 22:03 BST, and a METAR row with a VFR badge, 13m ago freshness, the raw EGLL METAR text, a SADIS UK Met Office source and fetched line, and the footer Reference only, verify officially — The large widget mid-duty: FDP countdown, Zulu clock, and the raw METAR - source, freshness and framing included.

The widget keeps the app's honesty rules at glance size: the raw METAR text rides along with its source and fetched time, freshness is badged, and every face ends in the same words the app uses - "Reference only - verify officially." If a row's data surface is switched off, the widget says so instead of showing a blank.

What widgets may show is controlled in Settings > Widgets & Live Activity - a switch per surface, and anything you turn off is never written outside the app.

The Widgets and Live Activity settings screen: subtitle Glance info outside the app, an Edit a widget card reading Touch and hold a widget, then tap Edit Widget with a caption about per-widget airports and rows, then Show on widgets toggles for Active duty FDP, METAR and TAF, all switched on — Widgets & Live Activity in Settings: how to edit a placed widget, and what may leave the app.

The foot of the Widgets and Live Activity screen: Sunrise and sunset, Zulu clock, Currency and Next flight toggles all on, a caption that anything switched off is never written outside the app, a Reset to defaults button, and the closing note that the Active duty countdown appears automatically while a duty is in progress, ending Reference only, verify officially — Per-surface switches, and the standing rule: switched off means never written outside the app.

The duty Live Activity

There is nothing to add or configure for the Live Activity: while a duty is in progress, a countdown card appears on the lock screen and the Dynamic Island on its own, and disappears when the duty ends. It counts down to the earlier of your planned off-duty time and the FDP limit the Duty & FTL engine computed, with the used-versus-allowed bar, your hard-stop and next-report times, and the destination's flight rules at a glance - and the same framing line as everywhere else, right on the card.

The card is honest about its own age too: if the app has not been able to refresh the figures, the Live Activity says the figures are not current and to open the app, rather than quietly counting on. Its switch is the Active duty (FDP) row in the widgets screen above - turn that off and the countdown never leaves the app.

Free, and quiet by default

The feed, every reminder, the widgets and the Live Activity are all part of the free app. The one thing Pro changes here is reach: free location alerts cover one watched location, Pro alerts on every airport and FIR you watch. And none of it makes a sound until you ask - every switch in this chapter starts with you.

Where next

NOTAMs - the alerts' biggest customer: watched locations, severity levels and keyword highlights.
Weather - the alert types and the personal minimums behind the breach alerts.
Duty & FTL - the engine the Live Activity and FDP widget rows count down against.
Home - the dashboard the bell rides on.
Free vs Pro - the one-location alert allowance, and what Pro unlocks.

Notifications & Widgets