Instagram Notifications Not Working: How to Fix It
You only find out about likes, comments, or DMs when you open the app yourself — no banners, no badges, no sounds. Usually something is switched off, either inside Instagram or in your phone's settings.
Try these in order
- Turn off "Pause All" inside Instagram. Go to your profile, tap the menu at the top, open Settings > Notifications, and make sure the Pause All toggle is off — if it was ever switched on, Instagram sends nothing until you turn it back off (TechWiser).
- Check your phone's notification permission for Instagram. On iPhone, open Settings, find Instagram, go to Notifications and enable Allow Notifications; on Android, long-press the Instagram icon, open app info, go to Notifications, and enable Show notifications (TechWiser).
- Turn off Focus or Do Not Disturb. On iPhone, swipe down from the top-right and disable Focus (or add Instagram as an exception under Settings > Focus > [profile] > Apps > Add); on Android, open the notification centre and switch off Do Not Disturb (TechWiser).
- Disable Scheduled Summary and Low Power Mode on iPhone. Notification Summary holds alerts until a set time — turn it off under Settings > Notifications > Scheduled Summary — and switch off Low Power Mode under Settings > Battery, since it throttles background activity (TechWiser).
- Turn on Background App Refresh on iPhone. If it's off, Instagram can't fetch anything while it's in the background, so no new notifications arrive (TechWiser).
- Clear Instagram's cache on Android. Long-press the Instagram icon, open app info, go to Storage, and tap Clear cache to shake out corrupted temporary data (TechWiser).
- Lock Instagram in the background on Android. Skins like MIUI and ColorOS aggressively kill background apps — open the multitasking view, long-press the Instagram card and choose Lock so the system stops shutting it down (TechWiser).
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