Missing toast notifications in Windows 8.1

I have clean-installed Windows 8.1 Pro a few days ago and decided to give some of the "modern" (or however they're called) apps a try. So I am using the app for e-mails and the Facebook app.

They seem to be pretty neat so far, however I have a pretty big problem with them and that is that most of the time, the toast notifications in the top right corner of the screen don't show up... Sometimes they do, but in like 90 % cases they don't. And then, when I am on my desktop, I have no way of knowing that I have received a new e-mail, Facebook message, nothing.

All the settings are turned on in the notification center mentioned here, the "calm period" (translated from Czech) is turned off and both the e-mail and the Facebook app have their notifications enabled.

Also, directly in the settings of each respecive apps, notifications are turned on (in case of Facebook for all events). Here are the screenshots of all the related settings I could find.

Is it only my case or is it something that is happening to everyone? How can I fix it? The Windows 8.1 Update 1 has not resolved the issue either.

zbr

Posted 2014-03-18T13:18:41.670

Reputation: 43

Check the notification delay.

– harrymc – 2014-04-09T19:09:22.970

That's not a delay, that's just the amount of time for which the notification is shown. There is no problem with that. – zbr – 2014-04-09T20:51:45.740

Notifications are either lousily done in Windows 8.1, or some parameter is wrong on your side. Maybe instead of my probing, you could list all these parameters for us, maybe as screenshots, and not just the notification delay. – harrymc – 2014-04-09T21:41:48.747

Can you please be specific as to what parameters you want those screenshots of? Do you mean screenshots similar to the one in link?

– zbr – 2014-04-10T07:53:30.707

Yes, and also the ones pertaining to my link and any other you think may apply. Most people on this forum are not on Windows 8.1 (power users are late adopters, for a good reason) so we need information. – harrymc – 2014-04-10T07:59:42.407

I have just noticed that the e-mail app was set to show notifications only when an e-mail comes from a "favorite person", whatever that means. I wonder if this came with the Windows 8.1 Update 1, because I am pretty sure I would've noticed something like that... So I have set it to show notifications on all incoming e-mails, hopefully it will help. Nevertheless, I am still missing most of the notifications from the Facebook app, so I will soon provide the screenshots you have requested. However, that may just be an error in the Facebook app itself... – zbr – 2014-04-10T08:11:21.390

The FB app is notoriously buggy, but a list of its settings might help. – harrymc – 2014-04-10T08:27:57.197

Well, besides a screenshot from the app linked in the question, there is also this in the settings. That's all that comes to my mind as to what you might mean with a list of its settings. Everything seems to be turned on, yet I am still missing most of the notifications. Probably really a problem of the app. The notifications of the e-mail app seem to have started working properly.

– zbr – 2014-04-12T18:38:59.257

These settings are probably enough. I suggest to keep the FB app updated and recheck the settings every time it's updated. Hopefully this will be fixed in the future. – harrymc – 2014-04-12T18:56:56.030

@harrymc: Please, add an answer advising me to check the settings of the e-mail app (that my comment from Apr 10 at 8:11 is about), because I probably wouldn't have found them without you. And also state there that the Facebook app is buggy and that there is probably nothing I can do but to wait for an update. Unless a miraculous answer resolving the issue comes, I will accept yours and grant you the bounty at the end of the bounty period. – zbr – 2014-04-14T09:09:12.117

Done. Feel free to modify the answer, as it is more yours than mine. – harrymc – 2014-04-14T11:09:51.493

Answers

_{(This answer is more of a summary of the work done in the comments of the post.)}

Notifications are lousily done in Windows 8.1, but I advised to still recheck all settings and include their screenshots in the post.

As the notifications you were missing the most were from the email app, you checked it and found that the app was set to show notifications for emails from "favorite persons", which you then reset to show notifications on all incoming emails. Your explanation was that this change was caused by the Windows 8.1 Update 1, and the resetting of this parameter fixed the notifications problem for emails.

In the settings for the Facebook app you turned on all notifications (even though this is a bit of an overkill), but this didn't help. As this app is notoriously buggy, this was taken to be a bug that might be fixed in a future version.

My final advice was to keep the Facebook app updated and recheck its settings after every update, to see if some new setting has now become relevant. Hopefully this will be fixed in the future.

harrymc

Posted 2014-03-18T13:18:41.670

Reputation: 306 093

If you're closing those apps with Alt+F4, it might be possible that the app won't show notifications on your desktop, if you want to leave the "touch" app in active state, you have to switch between the windows wit the top left corner :) . In my case, facebook is not always showing the notifications it's supposed to show, sometimes, I get the notification of some friends activity/messages but not for everyone, I think it's related to facebook's app ^^ .

Tarek Jellali

Posted 2014-03-18T13:18:41.670

Reputation: 136

Nope, I am not closing the apps, in fact I look into them pretty often to check for events myself since the notifications are so unreliable. And even though the Facebook app might have its own issues, some notifications of the e-mail app have most certainly not been shown either. – zbr – 2014-03-18T13:56:20.327

The thing is, this issue is also happening with me also, and I can't really fix it, maybe because Windows can't really handle push notifications as it's supposed to be.. – Tarek Jellali – 2014-03-18T14:06:34.120

I can promise you one thing, Windows can handle push notification just fine, there is a configuration problem here. – Ramhound – 2014-03-18T15:45:17.143

@Ramhound: Care to elaborate at what the problem might be? It's really a clean install, I am not aware of changing any settings anywhere that could affect it... – zbr – 2014-03-19T11:50:48.873