Notifications: languages, sounds, and why they stop arriving

What language will my notifications arrive in?

Yours. AKCS renders every notification it writes in the language stored on your own profile, not in one language chosen for the whole community. Two residents of the same flat can receive the same gate alert, one in Telugu and one in English.

Six languages ship in the app and in push. The picker shows each in its own script, because a resident who does not read English cannot find "Telugu" in a list but can find తెలుగు.

It is stored per resident because almost no notification is written by the person who reads it. A visitor-arrived alert is triggered when a guard scans a QR. A dues reminder is built by a scheduled job at 07:30 with nobody on a screen at all. Your language is saved against your account and applied when the message is composed.

Two honest limits:

• Anything a person typed stays in the language they typed it. Announcement bodies, complaint descriptions, house rules, and amenity and space names are not machine-translated.
• If your choice never reached the server, you get English. Changing the language while offline saves it on the phone but not on your account. Open the app once on a working connection and it is sent again.

Can I change the sound a gate request makes?

Yes. Six alert sounds are selectable under "Notification Sound" in the app. Tap one to hear a preview before you keep it, and the choice saves to your profile.

The choice is personal, not shared with your flat: when a visitor turns up, each resident's notification carries their own ringtone.

On iPhone the sound is written into the notification itself, which is why it still plays while the app is in the background. On Android each sound has its own notification category, because Android freezes a category's sound at the moment it is created and will not change it afterwards.

Why does a gate approval sound different from everything else?

Because it is deliberately not filed with the rest. A new access request arrives on a separate, highest-importance category that pops up on screen, vibrates and plays your chosen ringtone. A visitor checking in or out is information, not a decision, so it uses the default sound and the ordinary category.

That split matters because an access request is time-boxed: it escalates after 90 seconds, and a decision inside the 30-minute late grace still counts as your decision. An approval buried in the same tone as a notice board post is an approval you will miss. See house rules and auto-approve if you would rather some visitors never reach you at all.

Push titles carry the community name as a prefix — "Wisteria: New access request" — so you can see which community a notification came from before you open it.

Why am I not getting notifications at all?

Work down this list in order.

1. Notifications are switched off for AKCS at the phone level. Open your phone's settings for the app and confirm notifications are allowed. On Android, also check the gate alert category itself — a category set to silent, or with its sound removed, cannot be repaired by the app.
2. Do Not Disturb, or a Focus mode, is on. Treat AKCS as a device-level exception in your phone's Do Not Disturb settings if you want gate alerts to break through at night.
3. Battery saving is restricting the app on Android. AKCS never asks your phone for a battery exemption, so if your handset restricts background apps you have to exclude AKCS yourself in your phone's battery settings.
4. You have no flat assigned yet. Notifications for a gate request go to the residents recorded against that flat. Until an admin assigns you to a Tower, Floor and Flat, there is nothing addressed to you and the app will look empty. A space invitation expires after 7 days, so ask the office to reissue it if yours has lapsed. See how AKCS onboarding works.
5. You signed out on this phone, or someone else signed in on it. Signing out of a handset stops notifications on that handset. If another person signs into their own AKCS account on your phone, that phone stops receiving yours.
6. You reinstalled the app or cleared its data. That rotates the phone's messaging token. AKCS retires the dead one automatically on the next send, but the new one only registers when you open the app and sign in.

Why does the notification arrive but my phone stays silent?

There is a check built into the app for exactly this. The "Alert Delivery" tile reads the settings the app cannot otherwise see and gives one of two verdicts: gate alerts will play a sound, or gate alerts will arrive silently. Below it, each setting it inspected is listed, with the blocking ones marked.

On iPhone it reports the permission state, sound, banners, lock screen and notification centre. On Android it reports the state of the gate alert category — turned off, silent, sound removed, or sound and pop-up on — and names the sound file that category is pointing at. A copy button produces the same report in plain English whatever language you use the app in, which is the fastest thing to send when you ask for help.

Why did only one of us in the flat get the approval request?

Every resident recorded against the flat is notified, but a resident with no active device registration is skipped silently. The usual causes are the ones above: signed out on that phone, a reinstall that has not been opened since, or a second account signed in on the same handset.

The fix is for that resident to open the app, sign in, then check the "Alert Delivery" tile. If they are new to the flat, confirm they were actually added — see add family members and tenants — because a resident who never got a membership is not a delivery problem.