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Notifications & email
Two ways to hear from your hangouts without keeping the app open: push notifications (per device, optional) and a daily email digest (per account, optional). Both are off until you turn them on.
Push notifications
What you'll get
| Event | Notification |
|---|---|
| New message | Saturday bowling night — Sam: ok but Saturday works better for me |
| Someone adds a widget | Sam dropped a date survey: Which day works? |
| The organizer locks the plan | 🎉 The plan is locked in! Dinner · Ippin Ramen · Sat · Jun 21 — opens the confirmed plan |
| Friend request / acceptance | Maya wants to be friends · Maya accepted your friend request 🎉 |
| Invited to a hangout | Maya invited you to hang out — tap to respond |
A busy chat updates one notification per hangout rather than stacking dozens. You don't get pushes for your own messages, and pushes are suppressed while you're looking at the app.
Turning them on
Notifications are a per-device choice — turning them on on your phone doesn't turn them on on your laptop.
- In a chat: after your first message on a phone, a card asks Want to get notified when your friends respond? Tap Turn them on (or Show me how on a mobile browser — see iPhone below).
- In settings: Settings → App behavior → Push notifications on this device.
Your browser will ask for permission; choose Allow. Once on, Send a test notification fires a real one at all your devices and reports how many it reached.
iPhone and iPad
Web push on iOS only works from an app on the Home Screen. In Safari, tap Share → Add to Home Screen, then open Planet4 from the Home Screen icon and turn notifications on there. Until then the toggle reads Not available in this browser.
Turning them off
Flip the toggle off in Settings → App behavior, or block notifications for planet4.us in your browser or phone settings. Signing out also unhooks the device.
The email digest
One email a day summarising what happened across your hangouts — and you can vote from it.
Turning it on
Settings → App behavior → Daily email of what's new. Your account needs a linked email (Google or email link under Settings → You → Account); the digest goes to that verified address. The card names the address it'll use.
What's in it
Subject: What's new in "Friday dinner?" or What's new in 3 of your hangouts. Inside, one card per hangout that had activity in the last day, newest first:
- The title and a one-line recap: 🎉 the plan is locked in · 5 new messages · looks ready to lock · Dinner · Ippin Ramen · Sat · Jun 21.
- Up to two widgets you haven't answered yet, with their options as buttons. Venue options include a photo, rating, address and an Open in Google Maps ↗ link.
- Open the chat →.
You get at most one digest every 20 hours, and only when something happened. The footer has a Turn it off link.
Voting from your inbox
Tap an option in the email and a small page opens: Record your vote in "Friday dinner?" — Which day works? → Saturday, with a Confirm vote button. Nothing is recorded until you confirm, so a mail app previewing the link can't vote for you. After confirming: 🎉 Your vote is in. and a link to the chat.
- No sign-in is needed — the link is personal to you. Don't forward it.
- Links work for 14 days.
- An emailed vote counts exactly like a tap in the app: it shows live for everyone and can complete a widget. On a multiple-choice widget a click adds your pick rather than toggling it, so a second click can't undo a vote.
- If the widget, option or hangout has changed since the email, the page explains why the vote couldn't be recorded and sends you to the app instead.
Reminders
Settings → App behavior → Reminders holds three toggles — A week before, A day before, Day of — that describe how you'd like to be reminded about confirmed plans. They're on by default.