Daneel fires OS toast notifications when background tasks start, complete, fail, or are cancelled. That way a site crawl finishing while you're on another tab, or a 250 MB data export completing while you walk away from your desk, still reaches you. This guide shows how to turn notifications on and off, suppress their sound, tune how long they stay on screen, and troubleshoot when no toast appears.

If you are new to background tasks themselves, see [Monitor Background Tasks](/how-to/background-tasks/) first.

## Open the Notifications panel

1. Click the Daneel widget icon to open the extension
2. Open **Settings** (gear icon)
3. Select **Notifications** in the sidebar (bell icon, between Tasks and AI Models)

The panel has three sections: master controls, per-event settings, and a Verify button.

## Master toggle

The top card has a single **Enable notifications** toggle. When this is off, nothing fires regardless of per-kind settings. Use it as a one-click silence when you want Daneel quiet for a while without reconfiguring anything.

## Silent toggle (no sound)

Directly below the master toggle is a **Silent (no sound)** switch. When on, Daneel asks the OS to suppress the notification sound — you still see the toast, you just don't hear a chime.

The OS has the final say: on Windows, Focus Assist and Do Not Disturb can still mute or suppress the toast entirely. On Linux the "silent" hint depends on your notification daemon.

## Per-event settings

Four task-lifecycle transitions can each fire a toast:

| Event | Default sound | Default duration | Typical use |
|-------|---------------|------------------|-------------|
| **Started** | On | 2.5s | Confirmation that a long-running task has begun |
| **Complete** | On | 3.5s | A task finished successfully |
| **Cancelled** | On | 3.5s | You stopped a task from the Tasks panel or a cancel button |
| **Failed** | On | 10s | A task errored out — longer default so you have time to read it |

Each event card has its own toggle + auto-dismiss slider (1.5–15 seconds). The slider controls how long the toast stays visible before it auto-closes. After the auto-dismiss the notification still appears in your OS notification center (Action Center on Windows, Notification Center on macOS) until you clear it manually.

Disabling a specific kind (for example, turning **Started** off because you don't need a chime every time a task kicks off) only silences that one kind — the others keep firing normally.

## Test now button

At the bottom of the panel, the **Test now** button fires a synthetic toast — exactly what a real completed task would produce. Useful for:

- Confirming the OS is rendering Daneel toasts at all
- Previewing the look-and-feel after you change Windows theme, OS dark mode, or a duration slider
- Debugging Do Not Disturb / Focus Assist interactions

Click it, watch for the toast. If nothing appears, jump to [Troubleshooting](#troubleshooting) below.

## Toast format

Every toast uses the same compact structure:

```
Daneel AI
{operation} > {scope} > {target} > {state}
```

For example:

- `Indexing > site > example.com > Complete`
- `Building knowledge graph > vault > Research notes > Started`
- `Exporting data > backup > Local file > Failed`
- `Indexing documents > vault > Project Alpha > Cancelled`

The format is deliberately terse — enough to know what happened, no marketing noise. There is no progress bar inside the toast itself; progress lives in the [Tasks panel](/how-to/background-tasks/).

## Click behavior

Clicking a Daneel toast closes it. That is the whole interaction — no tab focus, no deep link, no extra panel opens. This keeps notifications unobtrusive: they inform you, they don't pull you away from what you're doing.

If you want to see more detail after a toast, open the extension and go to **Settings > Tasks**.

## Where toasts appear on your platform

| OS | Location | Persistence |
|----|----------|-------------|
| **Windows 10/11** | Bottom-right, above the system tray | Sits in Action Center (speech-bubble icon on the taskbar) after auto-dismiss |
| **macOS** | Top-right corner | Stacks in Notification Center (click the clock in the menu bar) |
| **Linux** | Depends on your desktop environment (GNOME: top-right; KDE: bottom-right; most DEs use `notify-send` conventions) | Varies by notification daemon |

## Styling and theme

You cannot customize Daneel toast appearance — colors, fonts, backgrounds, or layouts. Chrome's notification API renders through the OS, and the OS owns the visual style. Daneel supplies only the icon, title, and message text.

The good news: toasts automatically follow your **system theme**. Turn Windows on Dark Mode (Settings → Personalization → Colors → "Choose your default app mode" → Dark), and Daneel toasts will appear with dark backgrounds and light text without any extra configuration. Same for macOS dark mode and Linux dark themes.

If you genuinely need fully custom-styled toasts that live inside the browser — for branding, for example — that would require an in-browser overlay instead of OS notifications, and it would only show while a Daneel surface is open. Daneel does not offer that today.

## Troubleshooting

If you click **Test now** and nothing appears on screen, Chrome accepted the notification but your OS silently dropped it. On Windows this is common after a fresh Chrome install or when Focus Assist is active.

### Check three Windows gates in order

Open **Settings → System → Notifications** (Win+I, then navigate):

1. **Master toggle** — the top switch labeled "Notifications" must be **On**.
2. **Per-app toggle** — scroll the apps list, find **Google Chrome**, confirm it is **On**. Click through to Chrome's entry and confirm both "Show notification banners" and "Show in notification center" are enabled.
3. **Focus Assist / Do Not Disturb** — must be **Off** for Daneel toasts to pop as banners. On Windows 11 this is at Settings → System → Notifications → Do not disturb. "Priority only" still suppresses most app notifications; either switch Focus Assist off, or add Chrome to the priority list.

:::note
Missed toasts are usually still in your notification center. On Windows, click the bell/speech-bubble icon on the taskbar — you'll typically find the toasts you never saw as banners waiting there.
:::

### Chrome missing from the per-app list

If Google Chrome doesn't appear in the Windows apps list at all, Windows never registered Chrome's notification subsystem. Fully quit Chrome — right-click its system-tray icon → **Quit**, not just close the window — then relaunch it. Windows registers Chrome's notifications on app launch.

### macOS settings

System Settings → Notifications → **Google Chrome** → "Allow Notifications" must be on. Banner style determines how long the toast stays visible.

### Nothing helps

Open the extension's service worker console (`chrome://extensions` → find Daneel AI → click **Inspect views: service worker**) and click **Test now** again. You should see two log lines:

```
[notifications] firing task-complete: {id: …, iconUrl: …, message: …}
[notifications] created id=… (requested …)
```

If both appear, Chrome created the notification successfully and your OS is dropping it — the three gates above cover 99% of cases. If you see `[notifications] chrome.notifications.create rejected:` instead, something is blocking the Chrome API itself — report the error message as a bug.

## See also

- [Monitor Background Tasks](/how-to/background-tasks/) — the panel where you actually watch tasks progress
- [Back Up Your Data](/how-to/cloud-backup/) — the one background task you'll most want a completion toast for
- [Privacy Model](/concepts/privacy/) — what Daneel shares with the OS notification system (nothing beyond the visible toast text)