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Guides
Getting StartedWorking with FilesFile PreviewsDeployment TopologiesVersion ControlBranches & MergingRunner (Headless CI)Sharing & CollaborationRFIs & SubmittalsNotifications & InboxSearchTrash, History & RollbackMigrating Existing Data
Admin & IT
Organizations, Projects & MembersIdentityPermissionsSelf-Hosted Seed NodesSecuritySecurity Architecture (Whitepaper)End-to-End Encryption SetupBilling & PlansOperationsDeploying to Your TeamData Portability & Offboarding
Reference
Filesystem Compatibility & ConformanceEngine Config File (config.json)Network Requirements
CLI Reference
swarmfileswarmfile-doctorswarmfile-migrateswarmfile-searchswarmfile-seedswarmfile-brlock
Docs / Guides / Notifications & Inbox

Notifications & Inbox

Swarmfile tells you when something needs your attention - an upload failed, a file you have was changed by someone else, someone mentioned you in a comment - rather than leaving you to notice it yourself. Notifications are per-user: everyone on the org gets their own, based on their own activity and preferences.

There are two surfaces, and they show the same events:

  • The web dashboard's notification bell, with an inbox you can scroll back through.
  • Tray toasts on the desktop, for the same events as they happen on the machine you're working on.

What generates a notification#

You'll get a notification for:

  • A failed upload - a save that couldn't be uploaded after retries. Because saving is asynchronous, this is how you find out something didn't land; without it, a failed upload would be silent.
  • Quarantine - your account being auto-quarantined by the ransomware detector, and being released again. See Security for what triggers quarantine.
  • A quota or billing block on upload - an upload refused because the org hit a storage limit or has a lapsed subscription, so you know why writes started failing rather than seeing an opaque error.
  • A file you have was changed by someone else - the project-wide "someone edited this" signal.
  • Comments and @-mentions - a new comment on a file, or someone tagging you specifically.
  • Watched files and folders - a change to something you explicitly subscribed to with watch.
  • Unlock requests - someone asking you to release a lock on a file you're holding.

Email notifications#

Some notifications can also be delivered by email, so an important one reaches you when you don't have the dashboard open or the tray running. The email-able events are the ones you'd want to know about while away from your desk: failed uploads, quarantine (applied and released), a quota/billing block, a file changed by someone else, comments, and @-mentions.

Watched-file changes and unlock requests are in-app only - they show in the bell and as tray toasts, but aren't emailed.

Email is off until you turn it on, and you control it per-kind - you can enable email for mentions and failed uploads while leaving the noisier "a file changed" kind in-app only, for example.

Quiet hours#

You can set a quiet-hours window - a start and end time in your own timezone - during which emails are held rather than sent, so an overnight render failure doesn't wake you. A notification raised during quiet hours still appears in the in-app inbox immediately; only the email is deferred.

Where to configure it#

Email preferences live in the web dashboard's Settings, under email/notification preferences: the master on/off switch, quiet hours, your timezone, and the per-kind toggles. Set them once and they apply to your account across every machine you sign in on.

Notifications vs. the activity feed#

The notification inbox is yours - the events relevant to you personally. It's distinct from the org Activity feed, an org-wide audit log open to any member (ACL-filtered - you see events on entries you can read; quarantine incidents and org-policy events stay owner-only within it, as does CSV export). If you're looking for a complete record rather than your own attention queue, that's Operations → Audit log, not this.

Where to go next#

  • Sharing & Collaboration - comments, mentions, and watch, which are what generate most notifications.
  • Working with Files - asynchronous saves and the upload queue, which the failed-upload notification reports on.