Notifications

Notifications send a webhook to somewhere you actually watch, such as Slack, Discord or your own endpoint, when something happens in Open WebUI that you care about. Each user sets up their own targets and chooses which events reach them, so a long answer, a channel message or a calendar alert can find you after you have moved on.

Notifications are off by default and are opt-in twice over: an administrator enables the feature, and each user adds their own targets.

This is outbound webhooks only. The Browser Notifications and Notification Sound toggles on the same settings page are separate, unrelated, and handled by your browser.

"Always Play Notification Sound" no longer has a toggle

A separate Always Play Notification Sound setting used to sit under Settings > Interface. Its control is gone, but the setting is still honoured: if you had it switched on, sounds keep playing always rather than only when you are away, and there is currently no way to switch it back off from the interface.

Enabling Notifications

Requirement	Where
ENABLE_USER_WEBHOOKS enabled (default: off)	Settings > Admin > System > General, the User Webhooks toggle
The features.webhooks permission (USER_PERMISSIONS_FEATURES_USER_WEBHOOKS, default: off)	Admin Panel > Users > Groups > Permissions

Admins always hold the permission. While the feature is off, the endpoints report the feature as absent rather than forbidden, so it stays hidden rather than looking blocked.

Targets

A target is a webhook URL plus the events it should receive. Set them up in Settings > Notifications. You can have several, for example a work Slack for channel messages and a personal endpoint for finished chats, and one is marked the default.

Each target has:

• A URL, validated when saved. It is masked when read back, showing only the scheme, host and the last few characters, so a stored webhook secret is not handed out again by the API or shown in full in the interface. Saving a masked URL unchanged keeps the stored one.
• Events it subscribes to.
• Enabled, to pause a target without deleting it.
• Automatic Delivery, either away or always.

Use Send Test to fire a test notification and confirm the endpoint works.

Events

Four events can be subscribed to:

Event	Fires when
chat.finished	A chat response finishes generating.
chat.failed	A chat response fails.
channel.message	A message arrives in a channel you receive notifications for.
calendar.alert	A calendar event alert triggers.

Delivery: away or always

• away (the default) only sends when you are not currently active, so you are not pinged about things you are already watching. You count as active if you have used Open WebUI in roughly the last three minutes.
• always sends regardless.

channel.message is the exception: it does not check activity and is delivered either way, since a message from someone else is worth having even while you are online.

The notify Tool

When the Notifications builtin tools category is enabled on a model, the model can send you a notification itself by calling notify, with a message, an optional title, and an optional target id. Leaving the target empty uses your default target.

This is deliberately separate from event subscriptions:

notify ignores events and delivery mode

A notification the model sends goes to an enabled target whether or not that target subscribes to any event, and whether or not you are currently active. Event subscriptions and away delivery only govern automatic notifications. If you do not want the model notifying you, disable the target or turn off the Notifications category for the model.

Pairing this with Timers is the usual way to be told about something later: the timer fires a prompt back into the chat, and the model calls notify when it has an answer.

Upgrading From the Old Notification Webhook

Earlier versions had a single Notification Webhook URL under Settings > Account that fired on chat responses. That field is replaced by targets, and an existing URL is migrated automatically into a target subscribed to all four events, so notifications keep arriving without any action.

Two changes are worth knowing about:

• Channel and calendar notifications are no longer sent straight from those features. They now flow through the notification system, so a target's event subscriptions and delivery mode decide whether they reach you.
• Notification settings now live in Settings > Notifications rather than Settings > Account.

Managing Notifications from Chat

Available tools

Tool	Purpose
notify	Send a notification to one of your configured targets.

Requirements

• ENABLE_USER_WEBHOOKS enabled.
• The features.webhooks permission (admins always pass).
• The Notifications builtin tools category enabled on the model.
• Native function calling, in a chat started from the interface.
• At least one enabled target.