Notifications (and the Android App) should have severities associated with the notifications. And have the ability to have a different sound with the different severities. Being notified that my door sensor battery is getting low is useful but not immediate. Being notified that I have a water sensor that is wet because my water heater is leaking or my sump pump is not working should be a severe notification that can be differentiated from others.
Have you taken a look at Pushover? It provides at least three levels of severity plus an emergency level that actually requires acknowledgment. I use that level for water leaks, alarm sounding, etc. I use the "normal" setting for routine notifications. And it can be configured for custom sounds as well.
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That might be the better option. $5 one time fee is reasonable.
I believe that the built-in notification capability of the system apps should be enhanced with severity.
No disagreement there!
Realistically though, Hubitat has limited development resources and if there's an inexpensive alternative available it might not make it to the top of their priority list.
Then remove it from the app. It seems barely functional. Don't confuse your users.
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I’m a bit confused - I use severity levels in notifications routinely. As usual, there are probably multiple good ways to accomplish what you’re looking for, but I do it by way of the pushover driver mentioned above by @brad5. IIRC you can add a severity level by prefixing the message with a one-letter code in square brackets. You can also play different sounds, which we also use.
If you share more about what you want to do, maybe I can help?
My point was that the Hubitat APP has "notifications" but they are minimally useful. If they don't have a plan to provide more functionality, they should remove that capability from the Hubitat APP and not confuse the situation. Just say that third party integration is required. Because for useful notifications, it is.
I use and am happy with the notifications provided by the Hubitat mobile app. If they were removed, I would be unhappy. I understand it lacks one specific feature you are asking for, but I don't think this warrants complete removal. If you're having problems, I would suggest stating what they are, and maybe someone can help.
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I see your point. It’s funny how one man’s bug is another man’s feature. For example, I love the fact that Hubitat is so open architecture that I can add/combine whatever other tools I want and have it all work simply and seamlessly. I grant you I’m using third party solutions (e.g., Twilio for SMS, Pushover for mobile, Sonos for TTS), but I’d much prefer that over waiting around for the single perfect solution that does everything I want.
To each his own. I respect your point (now that I understand it!).
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I can update my notifications to use pushover. It seems well worth a $5 contribution.
There might be a use case for the limited capabilities of the built-in APP compared to pushover, but it eludes me.
I've been a big Pushover fan for a while, but I didn't realize how easy it would be to set up different severities. I'm off to create multiple Pushover notify devices. 1 per severity. THANK YOU!
Side note, my current solution is to use the email notifier for low-priority notifications and Pushover for things I want to know about in real-time. That has been serving me well, but now I'm excited about "emergency" notifications. 
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I would literally throw my phone through a wall if it made a sound without me provoking it. To wit, the generic push notification from Hubitat fills my needs. I'm sure that's the case for a good chunk of users. Just because you believe it's barely functional does not make that true and surely doesn't mean it should just be trashed.
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+1 for all of this!
The built in notifications are hardly useless and count me in that good chunk that finds it more than adequate.
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Heck, I barely turn on mobile data at all. The SendMail app is great and I use it to email me text notifications when on the go.
Since I expect a lot of Hubitat users value local operation, I'll throw in a mention for Gotify https://gotify.net/
It is a completely local/self-hosted open-source notification server paired with an Android app (sorry, no iOS). The setup is a little involved. It's easy to install the server under Docker, but remote secure access without an always-on VPN back to home requires DDNS, setup of LetsEncrypt and Nginx or some other way of getting secure access back to the server. The Android app can be set up with 4 different sounds for different priorities, or as I have it set up, 3 sounds plus silent for very low priority notifications.
The easiest way to send a notification from Hubitat is via HTTP POST with a JSON body that contains the formatted message (title, message, priority). So it's not integrated into the Hubitat notification action, but I haven't found that to be too limiting.
Since it's completely local, I have the ability to notify (if I'm home) if the WAN goes down on my router. I also use email, email to SMS, and Hubitat app notifications for various things, but the majority of my notifications run through Gotify. For things like smoke/fire/leak detections, I send through all of the above.
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FYI, a driver could easily be written to be a virtual notification device, take the notification and push it to the server via the HTTP POST. You just make the settings on the driver the IP / Key or whatever it needs to know how to contact the service.
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You and I will disagree about whether a notification should be silent. I guess you have your phone set to be silent on text messages also...
But silent or not, being unable to differentiate any importance of notifications in the default Hubitat APP is a major shortcoming. Because of this shortcoming I have transitioned my notifications away from the default APP.
I've been thinking of trying to do that, but I'd probably have to adapt some similar code as I'm not that good with Groovy. I'll have to search for community-built notification devices and see what I can figure out.
Check out this one for telegram, it uses HTTP Post [RELEASE] Telegram Bot API (notifications)
I took this and did some upgrades to it and use it for Telegram. I may have to switch to Pushover though I like the idea of the severity options.
Here is my modified version (mostly logging fixes)
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This seems like an overreaction to me too.
I like the priority levels that pushover integration provides.
My wife doesn’t. She prefers to have the Hubitat app on her phone and the single notification sound it makes. She doesn’t want the pushover app on her phone as well.
I don’t see anything inherently problematic or confusing about that. We have different preferences, Hubitat can accommodate both.
Now, if I tried to impose my preferred notification solution on her and took away the one she preferred, then there would be a serious problem.
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