# How to Fix Notifications Not Working on Windows 11

URL: https://www.mytechnician.tech/tips/fix-windows-11-notifications-not-working/
Published: 2026-05-24 | Updated: 2026-08-10 | Author: Ankit Kumar
Tags: Windows 11, Troubleshooting, Fix
Summary: Missing notifications on Windows 11? Turn off Do Not Disturb, fix per-app notification settings, and re-register the shell to get your alerts back.
Recommended app: PC-Troubleshooter — https://www.mytechnician.tech/apps/windows-troubleshooter/ (Microsoft Store: https://apps.microsoft.com/detail/9N7RWKW8SP24?hl=en-us&cid=mytechnician-web). Optional; every step below uses built-in Windows tools.

## The Problem
No notification banners and no sounds—email, Teams, Outlook, or alarms simply never appear. Nine times out of ten it is **Do Not Disturb** quietly swallowing them, or a per-app toggle that was switched off and forgotten.

> **Start menu or taskbar misbehaving too?** See [Start menu not opening](https://www.mytechnician.tech/tips/fix-windows-11-start-menu-not-opening/) and [taskbar not working](https://www.mytechnician.tech/tips/fix-windows-11-taskbar-not-working-disappearing/).

## First: One App or All Apps?
The answer sends you down two very different paths.

* **One app only** → the app's own settings, its background permission, or its account state. Jump to the last section.
* **Every app** → a Windows-wide setting or a broken shell component. Work through the steps in order.

Test it quickly: open **Settings** → **System** → **Notifications**, scroll to any app, and use a reliable trigger such as setting an alarm in the Clock app two minutes ahead.

## Step 1: Turn Off Do Not Disturb
1. Click the date and time on the taskbar to open **Notification Center**.
2. If the bell icon shows a crescent moon, Do Not Disturb is on—click it to turn it off.
3. Also check **Settings** → **System** → **Notifications** and confirm **Do not disturb** is off there.

## Step 2: Check the Master Toggle
**Settings** → **System** → **Notifications** → the top **Notifications** switch must be **On**. If this is off, nothing else in this guide matters.

While you are there, tick **Show notifications on the lock screen** if you expect them there, and confirm **Allow notifications to play sounds** is on.

## Step 3: Fix Automatic Do Not Disturb Rules
Windows enables DND for you under several conditions, and people rarely remember setting them.

1. **Settings** → **System** → **Notifications** → **Turn on do not disturb automatically**.
2. Untick any rule that applies to you:
   * **During these times**
   * **When I'm duplicating my display** — this catches everyone who presents or plays on a TV
   * **When I'm playing a game**
   * **When using an app in full-screen mode** — including full-screen video and browsers
   * **For the first hour after a Windows feature update**

The full-screen rule is the single most common cause of "notifications stopped working" reports.

## Step 4: End Any Focus Session
A running Focus session silences alerts deliberately. Open the **Clock** app → **Focus sessions** → **End session** if one is active.

## Step 5: Review Per-App Settings
1. **Settings** → **System** → **Notifications** → scroll to **Notifications from apps and other senders**.
2. Turn the app on.
3. Click the app name and check the detail switches: **Show notification banners** and **Play a sound when a notification arrives**. An app can be "on" while banners are off, which produces silent alerts that only appear in Notification Center.
4. Set **Priority of notifications in notification center** to **Top** for anything urgent.

## Step 6: Let Background Apps Run
An app that Windows has suspended cannot raise a notification.

1. **Settings** → **Apps** → **Installed apps**.
2. Find the app → ⋯ → **Advanced options**.
3. Set **Background apps permissions** to **Always** (or **Power optimized**).
4. Also check **Settings** → **System** → **Power & battery** → **Battery saver**. Battery saver suppresses background activity; raise the auto-on threshold or disable it while testing.

## Step 7: Re-register the Shell Components
If notifications are dead across the board, the notification platform may need rebuilding. Right-click **Start** → **Terminal (Admin)**:

```powershell
Get-AppxPackage -AllUsers | Foreach {Add-AppxPackage -DisableDevelopmentMode -Register "$($_.InstallLocation)\AppXManifest.xml"}
```

Expect several red errors about packages that cannot be re-registered—those are normal and can be ignored. Restart afterwards.

## Step 8: Rebuild the Notification Database
A corrupted notification database silently breaks the whole system. Close all apps, then in Terminal (Admin):

```cmd
net stop WpnUserService
```

Then delete the database file at:

```
%LocalAppData%\Microsoft\Windows\Notifications\wpndatabase.db
```

Restart the PC. Windows rebuilds the database from scratch. You lose notification history, nothing else.

## Step 9: Repair System Files
```cmd
sfc /scannow
```
```cmd
DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth
```

Details: [repair Windows 11 with SFC and DISM](https://www.mytechnician.tech/tips/how-to-run-sfc-dism-repair-windows-11/).

## When Only One App Is Affected
* Check the app's **own** notification settings—Teams, Slack, Outlook, and Discord all have internal controls that override nothing but silence plenty.
* Confirm you are actually signed in to that app's account and it is not in a "away/offline" state.
* For Outlook, check **File** → **Options** → **Mail** → **Message arrival**.
* For a website's push notifications in Chrome or Edge, check the padlock icon → **Site settings** → **Notifications**, and see [stop spam notifications from your browser](https://www.mytechnician.tech/tips/stop-browser-notification-spam-windows-11/) if the problem is the opposite one.

## Still Nothing?
A damaged user profile breaks notifications system-wide while a fresh account works perfectly. Create a new local account (**Settings** → **Accounts** → **Other users** → **Add account**) and test there. If notifications work in the new profile, the original profile is the fault—see [fix "signed in with a temporary profile"](https://www.mytechnician.tech/tips/fix-temporary-profile-windows-11/).

---
Source: https://www.mytechnician.tech/tips/fix-windows-11-notifications-not-working/ — My Technician, free Windows 10/11 troubleshooting guides.
Related tool: PC-Troubleshooter (PC-Troubleshooter is a system diagnostic and repair tool for Windows 10 and Windows 11—hardware, drivers, network, and common fixes in one app.) — https://www.mytechnician.tech/apps/windows-troubleshooter/
More guides: https://www.mytechnician.tech/llms.txt