Push notifications on phones and computers

A push alert arrives on a phone or computer when two things are true:

1. Push is turned on for your account on that device. You do this on your Profile page, as described below.
2. You are one of the rule's push recipients. Turning push on does not add you to any rule. A new rule you create starts with you as its push recipient; on other rules, whoever edits the rule chooses the people. See Step 4: Choose who is told.

Each phone, tablet and computer is set up on its own. On a computer, each browser counts separately: Chrome and Edge on the same Windows PC are two entries in your list, and each needs push turned on.

CropWatch checks access at the moment it sends. If your access to a sensor has been taken away or set to Disabled, alerts from that sensor stop reaching you, even while your name is still on the rule. The levels are explained in Sharing access and permission levels.

Repeat the steps on every phone, tablet and computer you want alerts on, signed in with your own account each time. Every device in your list gets every push alert meant for you, so a rule that fires at 2 a.m. rings your phone and also shows on the office PC.

CropWatch names each entry for you:

• Phones and tablets: “iPhone”, “iPad”, “Android phone” or “Android tablet”.
• Computers: the browser and the system, such as “Chrome on Windows”, “Edge on Windows” or “Safari on Mac”.
• Anything else: “Unknown device”, when CropWatch cannot tell what it is.

Under each name, “Added” gives the day push was turned on there, and “Last opened” the last time you opened CropWatch on it while signed in. The device you opened most recently is at the top. A phone you replaced months ago keeps an old “Last opened” date; remove it as described below.

Push belongs to a browser and an account together. On an office PC that three people sign in to, each person signs in, opens Profile and presses Enable push notifications for themselves. The browser asks for permission only the first time; for the second and third person the button turns push on straight away.

Two things work differently from what people expect:

• Logging out does not stop push. Alerts for an account keep arriving on that browser after its owner logs out, and each notification shows the rule name, the sensor and its location to whoever is at the screen. To stop them, press Disable on this device before logging out, or remove the computer from your list later, from your phone.
• One alert, one notification. When several accounts on the same browser are told about the same alert, the computer shows it once, not once per person.

When one person turns push off on a shared computer, everyone else's alerts keep arriving there.

A push alert has a title and a few short lines. For a rule called “Greenhouse too cold” it looks like this:

• Title: “【CropWatch】” followed by the rule's name, for example “【CropWatch】Greenhouse too cold”.
• First line: the sensor's name, with its location in brackets, such as “Greenhouse 1 north（Main farm）”.
• Condition lines: each condition that was met, written as the data field's internal name, the comparison, the limit, an arrow and the reading: “temperature_c < 5 → 3.8”. Up to three are listed; any more show as “+1”, “+2” and so on.
• Last line: the date and time in Japan time, such as “2026-11-10 02:14 JST”, whatever time zone you have chosen in CropWatch.

If the same rule sets off again for the same sensor while the earlier notification is still on screen, the new one replaces it and sounds again. The list of notifications holds one per rule and sensor.

Tapping the notification opens that sensor's page in CropWatch, inside its location. If CropWatch is already open, in a browser window or as the installed app, that window comes to the front and moves to the sensor instead of a second window opening. If it was already showing that sensor, it only comes to the front.

A sensor that does not belong to any location opens the dashboard instead.

On an iPhone or iPad, push alerts only reach CropWatch opened from its Home Screen icon. In Safari or any other browser tab, the Push notifications card says “On iPhone or iPad, first add CropWatch to your Home Screen (Share → Add to Home Screen), then open it from there to enable push notifications.” and has no button.

1. Open CropWatch in Safari and sign in.
2. Tap the Share button, then Add to Home Screen, then Add. CropWatch shows the same instructions in a card at the bottom right of the screen.
3. Close Safari and open CropWatch from its new Home Screen icon. Sign in if it asks.
4. Go to Profile, press Enable push notifications and tap Allow.

The phone then appears in your list as “iPhone”. Installing is explained step by step in Installing CropWatch as an app.