Send notifications

This guide covers how a notification is written, how the kit decides which channels carry it, and where the user reads it. You need it the first time your product has to tell someone that something happened.

The three channels

Every notification is a Laravel notification that extends App\Notifications\Notification. That base class asks the recipient which channels to use, and the recipient answers from App\Traits\UserBase::channelNotifications():

Nothing you configure changes this list. A notification you send with $user->notify(...) goes to the database always, to email if the user wants email, and to every browser they have subscribed. The web push half needs the PWA and VAPID keys, which /help/web-push-and-the-pwa covers; without them the third channel is simply never in the list because nobody can subscribe.

There is a fourth channel, App\Channels\SmsChannel, which sends through App\Services\SnsService and is used only by the phone verification code. It is not part of the base class and no user preference reaches it.

Create a notification

The project ships its own stub, so the generator gives you a class that already extends the base:

php artisan make:notification Orders/OrderShipped

Fill in the three methods and, when the notification points somewhere, the fourth:

<?php

namespace App\Notifications\Orders;

use App\Models\Order;
use App\Notifications\Notification;

class OrderShipped extends Notification
{
    public function __construct(public Order $order) {}

    protected function subject(): string
    {
        return __('Your order :number is on its way', ['number' => $this->order->number]);
    }

    protected function description(): string
    {
        return __('It left our warehouse today. Track it from your account.');
    }

    protected function image(): string
    {
        return $this->order->product->photo;
    }

    protected function url(): ?string
    {
        return route('app.orders.show', $this->order);
    }
}

Send it like any Laravel notification:

$order->user->notify(new OrderShipped($order));

Write every string through __(); the kit translates lang/*.json from English.

Mind image(). The default reads auth()->user(), which is right when a signed-in person triggers a notification about themselves and wrong when a queued job or a command sends it: there is no signed-in user there, so it falls back to the app icon. Pass the model in the constructor and return its picture, as the example does. The class make:notification generates returns auth()->user()->avatar with no fallback, so it fails when nobody is signed in: replace it before sending from a job or a command. The same goes for senderId(): a queued notification captures the sender in its constructor, as the ticket notices do, because nobody is signed in when the worker sends it.

What the base class does for you

You never write via(), toMail(), toArray() or toWebPush() for the common case. The base class builds all of them from your four methods:

• via() returns $notifiable->channelNotifications(): database, plus mail when send_mail is true, plus NotificationChannels\WebPush\WebPushChannel when the user has rows in push_subscriptions.
• toMail() builds a MailMessage with subject() as subject and greeting, description() as the single line, and an action button labelled button() pointing at url() when there is one. It uses the default Laravel mail template.
• toArray() stores title, description, image, sender_id, icon (inbox), color (bg-primary-700), url and target (null) in the data column of the notifications table. With a sender, sender_id holds who it was and image is left empty, because a stored address of one size of a profile photo breaks as soon as that person changes or removes the photo.
• toWebPush() builds a WebPushMessage with title, body and icon, and puts url() in data.url, which the service worker opens on tap.

Two things the base class does not do:

• It does not queue. It uses Illuminate\Bus\Queueable but does not implement ShouldQueue, so the mail and the push requests go out during the request that called notify(). Add implements ShouldQueue to your own class when a notification is sent to many people or from a screen that should stay fast, and make sure a worker is running (/help/queues-and-scheduled-work).
• It does not pick a locale. Laravel renders the notification in the application locale at the moment it is sent. To send in the recipient's language, call $user->notify((new OrderShipped($order))->locale($user->locale)).

Adjust one notification

Override what you need and leave the rest to the base class.

Only some channels, whatever the user prefers:

public function via(object $notifiable): array
{
    return ['mail'];
}

The kit does this in CreatedUserNotification (mail only: a welcome email with the password has no business in the bell) and in TestWebPushNotification (push only: it exists to prove a browser subscription works).

A richer email, keeping the subject:

public function toMail(object $notifiable): MailMessage
{
    return parent::toMail($notifiable)
        ->line(__('Your tracking number is :number.', ['number' => $this->order->tracking]));
}

Or a Markdown template of your own, as RoleUpdateNotification and AnnouncementNotification do:

public function toMail(object $notifiable): MailMessage
{
    return (new MailMessage)
        ->subject($this->subject())
        ->markdown('emails.orders.shipped', ['order' => $this->order]);
}

What never changes: subject() and description() are defined on every notification, because every channel reads them, and image() is defined whenever the default would be wrong. Do not edit App\Notifications\Notification to special-case one notification. The base exists so that adding a channel is one change there and one in channelNotifications(), and every notification in the project gains it.

What the user sees

The bell in the top bar is the Livewire component App\Livewire\Auth\Notifications\Notification. It shows a red badge with the unread count (+9 past nine), a dropdown with the last ten notifications grouped by day, each with its image, icon, title and relative time, and a "Mark as Read" link that marks every unread one. Clicking a row marks it as read and follows its url.

"View all notifications" opens the notification centre at /account/notifications (route auth.notifications.center, component App\Livewire\Auth\Notifications\Index): a paginated list of twenty per page, unread rows highlighted, each with title, description and date. User::notifications() orders unread first, then newest. The rest of the account area is described in /help/your-account-area.

A notification with no url() renders as a link to #: the row is readable but goes nowhere. The picture is resolved when the row is drawn: with a sender it is that person's current profile photo, their default picture when they have none, and the app icon when the account no longer exists; without a sender it is the stored image, and the app icon when that is empty.

The user's preferences

The profile page (/account) has a "Notifications" card with one toggle, "Email notification", bound to the send_mail column. New users start with it on. There is no separate toggle for the bell: the database channel is always on so that a user who turns email off still finds everything in the centre.

Push is not a preference column. A user is "subscribed" when their browser has registered a subscription, and they turn it on or off per browser from the same card (the toggle appears only when the PWA and VAPID keys are configured). The migration 2026_06_01_180000_drop_send_webpush_from_users_table removed the old send_webpush column for that reason.

Which mailer sends the email

The mail channel uses the default mailer, MAIL_MAILER in .env. .env.example ships MAIL_MAILER=failover, and the failover mailer defined in config/mail.php tries mailgun first and ses second, so a notification email is not lost when one provider is down. The sender is MAIL_FROM_ADDRESS and MAIL_FROM_NAME. The mail_fallbacks list in config/auth.php is a different mechanism: it applies only to the email verification code, not to notifications. The transports, their keys and the SMS provider are in /help/email-and-sms-delivery.

Every email sent through the mail channel, and every SMS, is recorded by App\Listeners\LogNotificationSent and App\Listeners\LogNotificationFailed in the communication_logs table, with recipient, notification class, subject and outcome. Administrators read them at /admin/communication_logs; see /help/audit-trails-and-webhook-events.

Notifications the kit already sends