The mobile apps

Install, sign in, and the two permissions that decide whether a page actually wakes you.

A page that arrives silently is not a page. Most of this article is about the settings that decide whether it makes a sound, because that is the part that goes wrong quietly and the part you cannot check by looking at Acked.

Install and sign in

  1. Install Acked from the App Store or Google Play.
  2. Enter the email address you use for Acked. We send a six-digit code.
  3. Enter the code. There is no password to forget.

The apps show the same alerts, schedules and settings the web dashboard does, against the same account. Signing in on a phone does not sign you out anywhere else.

Allow notifications, then check it worked

The app asks for notification permission the first time it opens. If you declined — or tapped past it — the app still works and will never make a sound, which is the worst of both.

Then send yourself a test page. Triggering a test alert from the dashboard and watching your own phone is the only check that proves the whole path — permissions, the token we hold for your device, and the delivery. Nothing on our side can tell you that a push we handed to Apple or Google actually rang.

Critical alerts, which break through Do Not Disturb

An ordinary push respects a silenced phone. That is usually right, and it is exactly wrong at 3am for the one alert that matters.

Acked can mark a page critical, which asks the operating system to sound it anyway. Two things have to be true:

  1. The alert's urgency is high. Urgency is a separate axis from priority — see Concepts — precisely so that "serious" and "wake someone now" can be different claims.
  2. You have allowed critical alerts for Acked on the device. iOS asks separately from ordinary notifications, and it is off until you say yes.

On iOS: Settings → Acked → Notifications → Critical Alerts. On Android, the equivalent is allowing the app to override Do Not Disturb.

Every person on call should turn this on once and test it once. A permission nobody verified is a permission that fails on the night you need it.

Voice calls, if your plan has them

Acked calls from +1-571-240-1029 when an alert goes unacknowledged. Save it as a contact before you need it: silence-unknown-callers on iOS and most carrier spam filters act on a number that is not in your address book. Download the contact card.

If a page did not arrive

Check the alert's timeline in the app or the dashboard first: it says whether we sent the push, and to which of your devices. That tells you whether the problem is ours or the phone's. Why didn't it page me? walks the rest of it in order.

Two common causes, both invisible from our side: