Gotify - Get notifications about everything on your phone
📆 2025-07-07 11:40
I like being updated, especially about things going wrong. This includes downtime for my home lab services, websites and, of course, when jobs like CI/CD are done or have errors.
Gotify is a simple server for sending and receiving messages, self hosted, free and open source, cross platform, written in Go and can easily be installed with it's docker image.
What you need
Let me list the things you need:
- a server - it can be an old laptop, pc or, even better, a tiny pc or a Raspberry Pi that is always turned on and connected to the internet.
- linux - I use Ubuntu server
- docker and curl installed
- an Android phone - sorry iOS users
- free time
Install gotify
As mentioned earlier in the things you need we'll use docker to install gotify
Once you have docker installed you can just run this:
As you can see I use port 8091 on the host because 80 is surely already used by everyone.
Once the container is started navigate to http://[ip.address]:8091
Create your account and add an APP. When creating an APP make sure to set default priority to something higher than 7.
If the priority is lower than 7 you will receive a silent notification on your Android phone. Even if you set a lower priority it's not a problem. Maybe you don't want high priority notifications (with sound) for all actions. You can also pass the priority parameter with each request and use a higher priority for important messages.
Once the APP is created a token will be available for it. This token is a unique identifier used to authenticate and authorize requests to send messages to a specific application within the Gotify server. Copy this token as it's needed to send notifications. In the commands below the token is <apptoken>.
Install Android App
Gotify is published in the Play Store. Install it :)
Configure Android App
When you first run the Android Gotify App you will be asked for the Gotify URL. In our case it's http://[ip.adress]:8091
After it finds Gotify at the URL enter your Gotify username and password. Choose a name for your session and we're done.
Using Gotify
Sending notifications from Gotify is easy. Just one simple curl command:
You should receive a notification with sound on your Android phone.
There are a lot of message extras that can be sent with the notification:
But I like keeping things simple. All I did was upload icons for my different Gotify APPS.
Custom domain
Let's say you want to use a subdomain/domain for your Gotify server. I use Nginx Proxy Manager. When adding a proxy host make sure to check Websockets Support as Gotify uses websockets for sending and receiving messages in realtime.
Uptime Kuma
P.S. If you're using Uptime Kuma for monitoring your services you can be notified by Uptime Kuma with Gotify.
In Uptime Kuma go to Settings -> Notifications and add a Type Gotify notification.