Support
Nothing pings you until you’ve said yes
Dogoos never asks for notification permission at startup. Here is every switch and what it governs, what actually arrives today, and the email side — where every optional list starts off and stays off until you choose it.
Settings → Your pack → Push notifications · Settings → Your pack → Email updates
The permission
Why the ask comes late
Signing in registers your phone quietly and asks for nothing. There is no permission sheet on first launch, no “allow notifications to continue”, and no second attempt a week later. The ask happens at one of three moments, all of them after you have done something that a notification would be useful for.
Why the ask comes late
- You install itNo permission dialog. Nothing to dismiss
- After your first readOnce there is something worth telling you about
- Or when you flip a switchTurning a category on asks for it then
- Or your first reminderSaving one asks for alarms, and only then
After your first read
A one-time sheet — “Stay in the loop?” — with Turn on reminders and Not now. It appears once ever, after a read has saved. Say no and it never comes back. It also names two nudges nothing sends yet — see what actually arrives.
When you flip a switch on
Turning a category on in Settings asks for the OS permission in the same breath. You moved the switch a second ago, so there is no guessing what the dialog is for.
When you save your first reminder
A health reminder is an alarm, and an alarm needs the same permission — so the Health Hub asks as you save one, not before.
Said no? Nothing is broken. The app carries on exactly as it did, and the in-app inbox still collects everything. One caveat worth knowing: a phone offers its notification dialog once. After a refusal no switch inside Dogoos can summon it back — the permission has to go back on in Settings → Apps → Dogoos → Notifications on Android, or Settings → Dogoos → Notifications on iOS. Do that first. The in-app toggles turn green whether or not the system permission exists, and a green toggle with nothing behind it delivers nothing.
The switches
Eight categories, and the two that start off
They live in Settings → Your pack → Push notifications, under three headings — Activity, Content and Other. The app’s own labels, and what each one is set to before you touch anything:
New articles and Offers & marketing are the two that need an explicit yes, and that rule is enforced twice over: the app treats a missing preference as off, and the server refuses to send either category unless it finds a stored true on your account. Neither was ever migrated from an older setting, and neither is pre-ticked.
The other six are operational and start on. When a category is off you get no push and no inbox row — nothing is silently queued for the day you change your mind.
Two notices ignore your switches. When somebody joins your household, every existing member is told. When the owner removes a member, the removed member is told. Both go out regardless of settings, because an invite code that leaked must never let a stranger into your dogs’ records silently. Nobody is told when a member leaves of their own accord, and the members who stay aren’t told about a removal either.
In practice
Dogoos is quieter than its switch list suggests
Three things currently come from our servers. The daily spin nudge, sent at 18:00 UTC — skipped entirely if you have already spun that day, and never sent to an account with no phone registered to receive it. Reward notices: a gift claimed, a referral Pass landing, a friend subscribing. And household joins and removals. Your welcome note is written straight into the in-app inbox with no push at all.
The other headings — streaks, saved reads, articles, tips, offers — are consent taken in advance. The switches are real and the server honours them, but nothing is being sent under those categories at the moment.
Which means the app’s own priming sheet oversells us. It offers a nudge “for your daily free spin, your streak, and when your monthly story is ready”, and only the first of those three exists — nothing sends a streak nudge, and nothing announces a finished Story Mode month. That is our sheet to fix, and we would rather correct it here than let you turn a switch on and sit wondering why it has never made a sound.
Health reminders are the exception that does fire, every day people set them — and they don’t come from us at all.
Health reminders
Alarms your phone fires, not our server
A reminder you set in the Health Hub — a booster, a worming date, a weigh-in — becomes an alarm scheduled on the handset itself. It fires at 9am local time on the day it’s due, and it doesn’t need a connection at that moment to do it.
It is scheduled to the day, not the minute. Dogoos never asks Android for the exact-alarm permission — that’s Play policy, and minute precision is meaningless for “lepto booster due” — so your phone is free to run it late. The app carries the caveat under the reminder list rather than hiding it: “Reminders are an aid — your vet’s schedule is authoritative, and notification delivery isn’t guaranteed.” Up to 32 upcoming reminders are scheduled at a time, soonest first. Anything already overdue gets no alarm at all; the screen badges it instead, so your phone isn’t shouting about something you already know.
The alarm names the dog and the thing — “Bramble: flea treatment” — over one line of body text: “Due today. Your vet’s schedule is authoritative — check the Health hub.” It hands you back the date and names the authority that outranks us. It never tells you what to do about it.
What a reminder does
- Fires on the date you entered, from your own phone
- Names the dog and the thing — “Bramble: flea treatment”
- Opens straight into the Health Hub when you tap it
- Disappears entirely when you switch Health reminders off
What it won’t do
- Decide when a booster is due — your vet’s schedule is the one that counts
- Tell you what to give, or work out a dose. Dogoos records a dose, it never calculates one
- Interpret a symptom you logged, or suggest it means anything
- Promise a minute. If timing is critical, use a proper alarm as well
Not medical advice. Reminders and the journal are a record you keep, not guidance. If you are worried about your dog’s health, or a reminder is overdue and you are not sure what it was for, speak to a qualified vet.
Every optional email starts off
One kind of message you can’t switch off: account and security email — verification, security notices and important service changes. It is marked Always on on the screen, it carries no offers and no unsubscribe link, and it exists to complete or protect an account action.
Everything else needs you to say yes to it, one list at a time, in Settings → Your pack → Email updates. There are exactly three optional lists. Your brief — off, daily or weekly — is a short factual snapshot of your own Dogoos activity, sent at about 9am in your local time. Gentle reminders is a nudge if you haven’t completed a read for a while, staged at 7, 30 and 90 days and cancelled the moment you take one. Tips, features & offers is product news and the one getting-started guide. Separately, under a Service receipts heading, sits a Bone Shop receipts switch, also off by default — factual confirmations of bones you spent. It is not a fourth marketing list, and that switch is the only place it can be turned off again.
All of them start off, and a missing record means off. Nothing was inherited from your notification choices: push consent is never treated as email permission. You also need a verified primary address before any optional switch will move — the screen offers Verify in Account and blocks the toggle until you have. Your address is resolved on our side from your verified account; the app cannot hand the server a destination, and at most two optional emails go out in any UTC day.
What optional email may contain
- Aggregate numbers from your own account — bones, reads, streak
- Reviewed Dogoos news, tips and occasional offers
- A receipt: what you bought with bones, and the balance before and after
- Privacy and Support links, on every message without exception
- Unsubscribe and Email preferences links on the three optional lists. A receipt carries neither — it is stopped in the app, at Email updates → Service receipts
What it never contains
- Your dog’s photos, keepsakes or clips
- Health or nutrition notes, or anything you said to Rex
- Household names, or any free text somebody else supplied
- Open tracking, click tracking or a tracking pixel — all three are switched off
- A friend’s address. There is no “email a friend” endpoint; Dogoos will not take one
Turning it off
What unsubscribe does, and what it deliberately doesn’t
The three optional lists carry a visible Unsubscribe link, an Email preferences link, and the one-click unsubscribe button your mail client puts at the top of the message. The Unsubscribe link and the one-click button both work in a browser, with nothing installed. Email preferences is a deep link into the app: on a phone with Dogoos installed it opens the screen, and anywhere else it lands on a page that says so. There is no preference centre on the web — the switches live in the app.
Opening the visible link shows a confirmation page and changes nothing until you press one of its two buttons: Stop this kind of email or Stop all optional email. Corporate mail filters and link scanners follow every URL in a message, so simply loading that page has to be harmless — the endpoint treats a page load as presentation only, and acts on the button press alone. Your mail client’s one-click button posts the same “stop this kind” action without the page.
Unsubscribing never touches account and security mail, and never touches your Bone Shop receipt choice. Back in the app the screen then reads “Optional email is paused”, and under it “You previously unsubscribed. Choose a new option below to start again.”, with a Resume my selected emails button — so nothing restarts by accident.
One more rule that catches people out: changing your primary email address invalidates the old binding and switches optional delivery off until you make a fresh choice for the new, verified address. Silence after an address change is the system working.
The inbox
The bell inside the app
Everything that reaches you also lands in the in-app inbox, which is why refusing push costs you less than it sounds. Opening it marks the lot as read. Swipe a row away to delete it. Spin nudges clear themselves after 7 days — they are wrong by tomorrow anyway — and everything else after 90. That clear-out goes on age alone, never on whether you have read something, so a recent unread notice is never swept out from under you.
In the browser. The web app says it plainly: “Browser notifications are not enabled in this first web release. You can still read your notification inbox here.” Push settings and push itself are on the phone app.
Questions, answered
The ones people actually email about
Will Dogoos ask for notifications when I install it?
No. Never at startup, and never on sign-in. The ask comes after your first read, in a one-time sheet you can decline; when you switch a notification category on yourself; or when you save your first health reminder, because the alarm needs the same permission. That’s all three moments.
I said no. Can I turn them on later?
Yes, but start outside Dogoos. A phone offers its notification dialog once, so the in-app switches cannot summon it a second time — turn Dogoos’s notifications back on in Settings → Apps → Dogoos → Notifications on Android, or Settings → Dogoos → Notifications on iOS. Then flip the categories you want back on in Settings → Your pack → Push notifications. Doing it the other way round leaves you with green toggles and a silent phone.
What does Dogoos actually send me?
Today: the daily spin nudge at 18:00 UTC, skipped if you’ve already spun; reward notices, like a gift claimed or a friend subscribing; and household joins and removals. Health reminders fire too, but those are alarms your own phone holds. The other categories are switches we honour and currently don’t send under — streaks, saved reads, articles, tips and offers — and that includes the streak and monthly-story nudges our own priming sheet mentions.
Can I switch off the household notices?
No, and that one is deliberate. Every existing member is told when somebody joins, and a removed member is told that the owner removed them — regardless of settings, because an invite code that leaked must never be able to admit a stranger to your dogs’ records quietly. Nobody is notified when a member leaves voluntarily, and the members who stay aren’t notified about a removal.
Why is my health reminder late?
Because Dogoos schedules it to the day rather than the minute. It never asks Android for the exact-alarm permission — Play policy, and minute precision means little for a booster — so the 9am alarm is a target your phone can slide. The line under the reminder list says as much: delivery isn’t guaranteed. If a date genuinely matters, keep your own alarm too, and treat your vet’s schedule as the authority.
Does turning on notifications sign me up for emails?
No. They are entirely separate systems and push consent is never read as email permission. Every optional email list starts off, needs a verified primary address, and needs its own explicit yes in Settings → Your pack → Email updates.
How do I unsubscribe from an email?
Use the Unsubscribe link in the message or your mail client’s one-click button — both work in a browser. The link opens a confirmation page that changes nothing until you press “Stop this kind of email” or “Stop all optional email”, so a scanner merely loading the page can’t unsubscribe you. It suppresses that list only: account and security mail is untouched, and Bone Shop receipts have their own switch in the app, at Email updates → Service receipts. Afterwards the app shows “Optional email is paused” with a Resume button.
I opted in, and nothing has arrived.
Check three things: that your primary address is verified in Account, that you haven’t changed your address since (a change turns optional delivery off until you choose again), and that the list isn’t showing as paused from an earlier unsubscribe. If all three look right, email us with the address you opted in on and we’ll check what we can see — addresses are stored as one-way hashes, so there is no per-account delivery log we can read back to you line by line.
Still stuck
Email a human
support@dogoos.com for accounts, data and privacy requests, billing questions and bug reports — including anything on this page that doesn’t match what your phone is doing. hello@dogoos.com for Kennel and professional plans, press and partnerships.
The app’s own line is the one we’ll stand behind: “Our team usually replies within a day.” There is no chat window, no phone line and no ticket number, because there is no call centre behind them — a message goes to a person who reads it.
Set the switches once,
then forget they exist
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