Notifications & push

The notifications inbox

Tap the Notifications bell in the sidebar. When something's waiting, the bell shows a badge with your unread count (capped at “9+”). Opening the inbox marks everything as read — the rows you hadn't seen yet keep their highlight for that visit so you can tell what's new, and there's an Unread filter chip if you want just the fresh ones. Notifications are grouped by Today, This week, and Earlier, and tapping one takes you to the thing it's about.

What generates a notification

As an athlete, you'll hear about things like:

• Follows — someone followed you, requested to follow you (private accounts), or accepted your follow request.
• Comments & replies — someone commented on your post, or replied to a comment you left.
• Likes — someone liked your post or your comment.
• Mentions — someone @mentioned you in a post or comment.
• Director announcements — official updates from races you're part of, plus cancellation and postponement alerts.
• Friends' races — someone you follow registered for a race. If you've marked someone as a favorite, you can also get pushed the moment they register, RSVP, or save an event (see Following & finding friends).
• Registration openings — a race you saved opened registration, or someone you follow is directing a race that just opened.
• Trophies & results — you earned a trophy, have one to claim, or your official race result was posted.
• Price increases — a heads-up before a race you saved gets more expensive.

Direct messages are the one exception: a new message shows up in Chats (with its own sidebar badge) and can push to your device, but it doesn't add a row to the notifications inbox.

Turning on push notifications

Push is optional and off until you say yes. In the browser, you'll see a banner — “Get notified about follows, replies, and event updates” — while push isn't set up yet:

1. Tap Enable notifications on the banner

   It only appears when you're signed in, your browser supports push, and you haven't already decided. “Not now” dismisses it for the session.

2. Allow the browser's permission prompt

   Your browser then asks for notification permission — that native prompt is the real switch. If you block it there, you'll need to re-allow notifications for runthis.run in your browser's site settings later.

In the Run This app, push uses your phone's system notification permission — allow notifications when the app asks, or turn them on for Run This in your phone's Settings. Your notification preferences are shared across the website and the app.

Choosing what pushes you

Go to Edit profile → Notification settings (the page lives at /profile/notifications). At the top is Allow push notifications — a master switch that silences everything below it. Under that, each category has its own toggle: new followers & requests, comments & replies, messages, likes, mentions, director announcements, event activity you follow, registration openings, trophies, race results — plus director- and timing-specific categories if you wear those hats.

Marketing email preferences are separate — they live in the email preference center, linked from the same settings page and from the footer of every marketing email. See Email preferences.

Per-event notifications

Every event page has a Notify button (the bell, near Share). It controls push for that one event's activity:

• All activity — every new post on the event's wall.
• Directors only — just announcements and posts from the race directors.
• Off — no activity pushes. You'll still hear about cancellations and replies to you.

Registering for or saving a Run This event subscribes you automatically at Directors only — use the Notify button any time to turn it up, down, or off, or to follow an event you haven't registered for. Outside races (listed from other platforms) have no director on Run This, so their setting is a simple on/off for the event's community wall.