Stay connected with your practitioner and never miss important updates about your appointments, messages, and care plan. Practice Better gives you complete control over when and how you receive notifications — whether you're on your phone, computer, or tablet.
In this article:
- Instant Alerts Overview
- Enabling Instant Alerts
- Managing Snooze Settings
- Customizing Your Notification Preferences
- Managing Chat Notifications
- Understanding Notification Content
- Troubleshooting Notification Issues
Instant Alerts Overview
Instant Alerts keep you informed about important updates from your practitioner, even when you're not actively using the Client Portal. Think of them as gentle reminders that ensure you never miss an appointment confirmation, a new message from your practitioner, or an important task that needs your attention.
These alerts work across all your devices, including the mobile app for iOS and Android, as well as Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Edge browsers on your computer. When an alert arrives, it appears as a popup notification similar to what you'd see from messaging apps, making it easy to stay connected with your care team.
📍 Please note: Instant Alerts must be enabled separately for each device where you want to receive them. However, your notification preferences (which types of notifications you receive) will sync automatically across all your devices once you configure them.
Enabling Instant Alerts
Setting up Instant Alerts ensures you stay informed about important updates from your practitioner without having to constantly check your Client Portal.
📍 Please note: You'll need to repeat this process on each device where you want to receive Instant Alerts — your phone, tablet, and computer each require separate setup.
On your computer:
- Click the Settings icon (gear) in the top-right of the navigation bar.
- Select Notification Preferences from the dropdown menu.
- In the Instant Alerts section, click Enable to activate alerts on your current device.
- Click Save Changes at the top right of the page.
On the mobile app:
- Tap the hamburger menu at the top-right and select Settings & Preferences.
- Select Notification Preferences.
- In the Instant Alerts section, tap Enable to activate alerts on your device.
- When prompted, allow Practice Better to send you notifications in your device settings.
- Tap Save Changes at the top of the screen.
Important setup step: After enabling Instant Alerts in Practice Better, you'll also need to ensure your device allows notifications from Practice Better. Check your device's and browser’s notification settings to confirm Practice Better has permission to send you alerts.
✅ You're all set: Once enabled, you'll start receiving notifications for the events you've chosen. You can customize exactly which notifications you receive at any time from the Notification Preferences page.
Learn more about Browser & Mobile App Compatibility →
Managing Snooze Settings
Snooze Settings give you the flexibility to take breaks from notifications without worrying about missing important updates. Whether you're protecting your evenings, enjoying weekends, or blocking out focused work time, snooze settings ensure your Instant Alerts respect your personal boundaries.
Think of snooze periods as scheduled quiet time — perfect for regular lunch breaks (like weekdays from 12-1pm), overnight hours, or complete weekend unplugs. The key difference between disabling alerts and using snooze periods is automation. Disabling alerts turns them off until you manually re-enable them, while snooze periods automatically silence Instant Alerts during specific recurring times, then resume when your scheduled quiet time ends.
Setting up a Snooze Period:
- Go to Settings > Notification Preferences.
- In the Instant Alerts section, click the Snooze icon.
- Select the weekday and time range when you want Instant Alerts paused (for example, disable alerts on Sundays from 9:00 AM to 10:00 PM).
- To add more snooze periods, click Add period. You can create up to 5 different snooze schedules.
- Click Save Changes to activate your snooze periods.
📍 Please note: You can select multiple days or create overnight snooze periods that span from one day to the next (for example, from 10 PM to 7 AM). Snooze periods only disable Instant Alerts during your set times — email notifications may still arrive depending on your email notification settings.
Customizing Your Notification Preferences
When you first activate your Client Portal account, all notification types are enabled by default to ensure you don't miss anything important. As you get comfortable with the portal, you can adjust these settings to match your preferences.
Practice Better offers notifications for various activities related to your care. Each notification type can be customized with separate controls for Instant Alerts and email notifications, giving you complete flexibility in how you stay informed.
Adjusting your notification preferences
- Click the Settings icon (gear) in the top navigation bar and select Notification Preferences.
- Scroll to the section labeled "Send me notifications when my practitioner..."
- Toggle notifications on or off for both Instant Alerts and email for each event type. Each notification has a few controls:
- Bell icon: In-App Notifications
- Envelope icon: Email notifications
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Mobile device icon: Instant Alerts
- Click or tap Save Changes at the top of the page.
📍 Please note: Grey or inactive icons indicate that notifications for that event are currently disabled.
Practitioner action notifications you can customize
Appointments and scheduling:
- Books, reschedules, or cancels sessions
Care plan and resources:
- Shares forms, notes, and other resources with you
- Creates tasks for you to complete
- Direct chat messages (Instant Alerts only)
- Direct chat messages when you're offline (email only)
- Group chat messages (Instant Alerts only)
Each of these notification types serves a specific purpose in keeping you connected with your practitioner and your care plan. You can enable or disable any combination that works best for your lifestyle and communication preferences.
📍 Please note: You cannot customize notifications for specific types of forms or resources — it's all-or-nothing for the "Shares forms, notes, and other resources" notification type.
Managing Chat Notifications
Chat notifications help you stay connected with your practitioner through secure messaging. Practice Better offers different notification options depending on whether you're in a one-on-one conversation or participating in a group chat.
Direct chat notifications
For one-on-one conversations with your practitioner or shared chats with your care team, you have two notification options:
- Direct chat messages (Instant Alerts only) — Receive popup notifications when your practitioner sends you a message.
- Direct chat messages when you're offline (email only) — Receive email notifications when you're not actively using the portal.
These two options work together to ensure you stay connected without overwhelming you with duplicate notifications. When you're actively using the portal, you'll see messages in real-time. When you're away, email notifications ensure you don't miss anything important.
Group chat notifications
If you're participating in group programs or community chats, you can control how much activity triggers notifications. Group chat notifications are delivered via Instant Alerts only (no email notifications for group chats).
To customize your group chat notifications:
- Go to Settings > Notification Preferences.
- Scroll to the Chat Notifications section.
- Under "Group chat messages (Instant Alerts)", click the dropdown menu.
- Choose one or more from the following options:
- All messages — Receive notifications for every message posted in group chats (default setting)
- Messages from my practitioner — Only receive notifications when your practitioner posts in the group
- Messages where I'm mentioned — Only receive notifications when someone uses @ to mention you specifically
- Replies to my messages — Only receive notifications when someone replies to your posts
- Click Save Changes.
These granular controls help you stay engaged in group conversations without notification overload. If you find a particular group chat too active, you also have the option to hide the chat from your messages list or leave the group entirely, though you cannot mute individual group chats without changing your global settings.
Understanding Notification Content
Knowing what information appears in each type of notification helps you decide which notification methods to enable and understand what to expect when alerts arrive.
Instant Alerts vs. Email Notifications
Instant Alerts function like email subject lines — they provide brief, essential information so you can quickly understand what happened. For example, an Instant Alert might say "Dr. Smith scheduled a session" or "Wendy sent you a message."
Email notifications include more comprehensive details such as:
- Specific appointment times and dates
- The title of forms or documents shared with you
- Direct links to pay invoices or complete tasks
- Additional context about the notification
This difference helps you decide which notification types to enable. If you prefer quick alerts to stay generally informed, Instant Alerts might be sufficient. If you want complete information delivered to your email inbox for reference, enable both types.
Notification delivery timing
Both Instant Alerts and email notifications typically arrive in real-time, though exact timing depends on your internet connection and email service provider. This means you'll usually receive notifications within seconds of your practitioner taking an action in your account.
Privacy and security considerations
Practice Better takes your privacy seriously, but it's important to understand that notifications may be visible on your device's lock screen or in notification previews. Consider this when enabling notifications, especially if others have access to your devices.
Notification content is designed to be discrete while still being informative. However, device-level privacy controls and lock screen behavior are your responsibility to manage through your device settings.
For detailed information about security in Practice Better notifications, review the Security Details in Practice Better Email Notifications article.
Troubleshooting Notification Issues
If you're not receiving notifications as expected, here are solutions to the most common issues.
Not receiving Instant Alerts after enabling them
- Verify you clicked Save Changes after enabling notifications in your Notification Preferences.
- Check your device's notification settings to ensure Practice Better (or your browser) has permission to send notifications:
- iOS: Go to Settings > Notifications > Practice Better
- Android: Go to Settings > Apps > Practice Better > Notifications
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Browsers: Check browser settings for notification permissions for practicebetter.io. Check device settings for Notifications and enable your browser.
- Confirm that Focus mode, Do Not Disturb, or similar features aren't silencing your notifications on your device.
- Try disabling and re-enabling Instant Alerts in your Practice Better Notification Preferences, making sure to save your changes.
Not receiving email notifications
- Check your spam or junk folder — Practice Better emails sometimes get filtered incorrectly.
- Verify your email address is correct in your profile:
- Go to My Profile and confirm the email address displayed
- If it's incorrect, update your login email.
- Confirm you haven't unsubscribed from Practice Better emails by clicking an "unsubscribe" link in a previous notification.
- Contact Practice Better support to check that your email address isn't on Practice Better's "do not send" list. This can happen if you unsubscribed, and our support team can add you back.
Managing notification volume
If you're receiving too many notifications, you have several options:
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Adjust your Practice Better notification preferences: Disable notifications for less critical events while keeping important ones like appointment changes enabled.
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Use your device's notification settings: Most devices allow you to control notification frequency, sounds, and delivery timing for specific apps.
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Enable Focus or Do Not Disturb modes: Use your device's built-in features to silence notifications during specific times (like sleeping hours or work meetings) without permanently disabling them.
Special considerations for family accounts
If you're part of a family record (where multiple clients share a single Client Portal login), all email notifications will be sent to the primary account holder's email address. The primary account holder manages notification preferences for all family members under that account.
Need more help? Practice Better's support team is available to assist you with any notification or Client Portal questions. They can verify your account settings and help identify any technical issues preventing notification delivery.