GitHub Notifications on Android: 5 Working Options (2026)

Updated August 2026 · 6 min read

GitHub has no official mobile app for notifications — not on Android, not anywhere. If your review requests and issue mentions reach your phone today, it's because of email, a browser tab, or a third-party tool. Here are the five options that actually work in 2026, with the trade-offs stated plainly.

1. The github.com mobile inbox (official, but pull-only)

Open github.com/notifications in Chrome or Firefox and add it to your home screen. It's the same inbox as the desktop site, wrapped as a PWA-ish shortcut.

Honest downsides: nothing arrives until you open it. There is no badge, no sound, no lock-screen preview. This solves "where do I look", not "how do I find out". Good as a companion to one of the options below, weak on its own.

2. Email notifications + Gmail rules (the reliable baseline)

Under Settings → Notifications, choose which events email you. Then create a Gmail filter for from:[email protected]: apply a label like GH, skip the inbox for noise categories, and mark review requests as important.

This is the only option that works everywhere with zero maintenance. Honest downsides: latency is minutes at best, GitHub's default email volume is punishing if you belong to busy orgs, and filtering well takes an hour of tuning. If your inbox is already overflowing, this makes it worse before it makes it better.

3. Third-party notifier apps (push-style polling)

Several Play Store apps poll the GitHub notifications API in the background and raise Android notifications. Quality varies a lot; check when each was last updated before installing anything, and remember you're handing a personal access token to an unknown developer.

Honest downsides: Android aggressively kills background polling (Doze mode, battery optimization), so "real-time" often becomes "whenever the OS feels like it". And token custody matters: prefer apps that are open source, or scope the token down to notifications only — see our token scopes guide.

4. Tasker / MacroDroid automation (the tinkerer's route)

If you already use Tasker or MacroDroid, an HTTP Request action against api.github.com/notifications every 15–60 minutes, plus an Alert → Notify step, gives you real Android toasts with no new apps:

# Tasker HTTP Request
GET https://api.github.com/notifications
Header: Authorization: token ghp_xxxx

# Response: JSON array — count items, notify with %COUNT

Honest downsides: the token sits in your automation profile, polling intervals under ~15 minutes drain battery and flirt with rate limits, and there's no tap-through list — you still end up opening the web inbox. It's the right answer for people who enjoy this kind of thing.

5. Self-hosted bridge (webhooks → Push, ntfy or Telegram)

The most robust setup: point repository webhooks (or a small serverless function polling the API) at ntfy.sh, PushBullet or a Telegram bot. Your phone just subscribes to a channel. Latency is seconds, delivery is true push, and the logic lives off-device where Doze can't touch it.

Honest downsides: you now operate infrastructure. Filtering which events matter, keeping the endpoint alive, and rotating tokens are all your problem. Excellent value per hour once set up; a weekend to set up.

Quick comparison