GitHub notification sounds not playing? Here are the 5 real causes

Updated August 2026 · 4 min read

You get GitHub notifications — you can see them if you look — but nothing ever pings, dings or pops up. On a busy team that means missed review requests and hours of delay on every PR. One of these five things explains almost every case of silent GitHub notifications.

1. You're relying on email, which is intentionally silent

By default GitHub sends important notifications by email, and your mail client may not play a sound for them at all — especially if they land in a filtered folder or a tab your inbox rules created. Check Settings → Notifications → Email on github.com to see what actually triggers an email, then check where those emails land in your mail client. If they're being filed away silently, no amount of sound settings will help.

2. Browser notifications are allowed but muted

If you use github.com in Chrome, Edge or Firefox, web notifications need two switches on: the site permission and the OS-level sound.

1. In the browser: Settings → Privacy → Site settings → github.com → Notifications → Allow.
2. In macOS: System Settings → Notifications → [your browser] → enable "Play sound for notifications". Browsers deliver their own notifications through this single system entry — if the browser's sound is off, every website is silent.
3. Note: browser notifications only work while the browser is running. Close it and the ping stops with it.

3. Focus / Do Not Disturb is silencing everything

Focus modes and Scheduled Sleep suppress notification sounds system-wide without telling you per-app. Open Control Centre and confirm Focus is actually off — and check System Settings → Focus for schedules that turn themselves on automatically (many people have a work-hours schedule they forgot about). Also look at the app's entry under System Settings → Notifications: if it shows a moon icon, deliveries are being held.

4. The app's own sound setting is off — or the volume routing is wrong

Dedicated GitHub clients each have their own alert toggle, separate from the OS. In DevNotify, Gitify or similar, open preferences and check the sound/alert switch directly. Then verify macOS is playing anything at all: click the volume icon, play any system alert, and check Sound → Output isn't routed to a disconnected monitor or Bluetooth device. A surprising number of "silent notification" reports are just audio going nowhere.

5. Watching too few repos — so there's simply nothing to alert on

Sounds only fire for notifications GitHub actually sends. If you've mass-unwatched repositories, mentions-only is on, or Custom settings exclude review requests, your client has nothing to notify about. Go to github.com → Settings → Notifications → Subscriptions and Watching, and confirm the repos you care about are watched with the events you want. Test end-to-end: have a teammate mention you or request your review, and see whether it appears within a minute or two.

Still silent?

Confirm notifications exist at all by opening github.com/notifications. Items there but silence everywhere else means the delivery chain is broken — items 2–4 above. No items there means the problem is upstream: watching and subscription settings (items 1 and 5).