Running it · Chapter 16
Setting up notifications.
nexcrate tells you when something happens, and it does so through your own services. There is no service of nexcrate's in between. You set up a “mailbox”, say your ntfy or a Telegram bot, and choose which events arrive there and how urgent they are. This chapter shows how that works for each of the seven services.
Adding a mailbox
- Open the tab
Open “Settings › Notifications”. As long as nothing is there, it says “Nothing set up yet”. With the plus you add a mailbox and choose the service.
- Fill in the fields
What a service needs is in the next table. Under “Name” you give the mailbox a name, such as “Phone” or “Family”. That is what the tile is called later.
- Send a test message
“Send a test message” sends a message with a four-digit code. Type the code under “Code from the test message” and click “Confirm”. That way nexcrate knows the message really reaches you. Email has no code, the mail server has to accept the test mail.
- Save
Only after the test do “Save” or “Check and save” work. The mailbox appears as a tile and can be switched off and on with a switch.
The seven services
| Service | What you enter |
|---|---|
| ntfy | First the instance with its address, such as https://ntfy.sh, and “Sign-in” (None, User name and password, or Access token). With “Add a topic” you create below it the topics you subscribe to in the app. Each topic is a mailbox. |
| Gotify | The address of your Gotify and the “App token”. Create an application in Gotify for it. |
| Telegram | First the bot with its “Bot token” from @BotFather. Send the bot /start, then “Get chats from the bot” finds the chat and “Take” adds it. For groups with topics there is “Topic in the group”, and “Deliver without sound” turns the sound off. |
| Discord | The “Webhook address” of a channel. You create it in the channel's settings under Integrations. The address is like a password. With “Name of the sender” you say what the message is signed with. |
| Webhook | An address that nexcrate sends a POST with fixed JSON to, for Home Assistant, n8n or your own scripts. Optionally you add an “Authorization header”, for example “Bearer abc123”. |
| Apprise | The “Address of the Apprise API” and a “Configuration key”. Apprise passes the message on to more than a hundred services, such as Signal, Matrix, Slack or Pushover. The credentials stay in Apprise. |
| First the mail server with “Mail server”, “Port”, “Encryption” (None, STARTTLS or SSL), user name, password, “Sender address” and “Sender name”. With “Add an address” you create the recipients below it, each with a “Subject” of its own. |
The webhook here is a mailbox for messages. It is not the same as the webhooks under “Settings › System › Webhooks”. Those send nexcrate's events, signed, to other programs, see API. Nexview does not need them, it reads the event stream itself.
Which events arrive
Under “What should arrive here?” you choose for each mailbox on its own. The events come in four groups.
- Loading and filing: “Download started”, “Newly filed”, “Upgrade filed” and “Download failed”.
- Needs you: “A download needs you”. That is the message for when nexcrate cannot go on alone, see Downloads.
- Library: “Title added”, “Title removed”, “File deleted”, “Season complete” and “Request from another program”.
- Operation: “Something is wrong, or fine again” and “New nexcrate version”.
For each event you also pick the urgency: “Quiet”, “Normal”, “High” or “Urgent”. “Urgent” makes ntfy and Gotify ring through quiet hours, and “Quiet” arrives without sound on Telegram. A phone that should be left alone at night can get “A download needs you” on “Normal” and “Download started” not at all. You set the “Language of the messages” to German or English for each mailbox.
When a message does not arrive
Every tile says how the mailbox is doing: “Last delivered” with the time, “Last one did not arrive” with the reason, “Nothing delivered yet”, or “Not confirmed yet” when the test is missing. A message that does not go out nexcrate tries again a few more times at growing intervals before it gives up. If you switch off an instance or a bot, all topics and chats below it fall silent too. Removing deletes the tile with everything below it, and messages still waiting are not sent any more.
Good to knowStart with one mailbox and just two events: “Download failed” and “A download needs you”. Those are the messages where you have to do something. You can add the rest later, once you notice you miss it.