It can be your settings or it can be Bumble. Bumble's troubleshooting page keeps a list of known bugs, and email and push notifications not arriving, even with the settings switched on, is one it has put on that list. It says there is no workaround while its team works on a fix. Other causes sit on your side: an alert switched off inside the app, a phone permission, or a battery saver. Those take a couple of minutes to check before you blame the app for missed messages.

Check Bumble's own switches first

Bumble lets you choose which alerts you get, and it is easy to have turned one off months ago and forgotten.

Tap the profile icon, tap the settings icon in the top right, and tap Notification settings. You will see four groups:

  • New messages.
  • Matches, which covers new admirers, new matches and expiring matches.
  • Top profile tips.
  • Other, which covers Bumble events, marketing, and research and surveys.

The two groups that matter are the first two. If you only keep one alert on, keep expiring matches, for reasons that come up below.

If it is the emails that are missing

Bumble sends some alerts by email, and they go to the email address linked for notifications. If that address is old, or the emails are landing in spam, it will look exactly like Bumble has stopped sending them.

To change the address, open Settings from the cog icon on your Profile, scroll to Notification Settings and select one of the options such as New messages or New matches. Tap Change email address, type in the address you want and tap OK. Bumble then sends a message titled "Please confirm your email address", and you tap Confirm email inside it. Check your spam folder if it does not show up.

Bumble notes that this only changes where your notifications go. Your login details stay the same.

The phone settings that silence it

If the switches inside the app are on, look at the phone itself. Bumble's troubleshooting page lists a few things that get in the way.

Bumble needs your permission to send notifications, the same as any app, so check it has that permission in your phone's settings. Battery saver can interfere with how Bumble runs in the background, which is exactly when a notification needs to get through, so try turning it off for a while. An out-of-date version of the app is another cause of bugs, so update it. And restarting the phone clears background processes that can make apps misbehave.

It is also worth checking any focus or do not disturb mode on your phone, which can quietly hold back alerts from every app at certain hours.

When the fault is on Bumble's side

If every switch is on and every permission is granted, you may simply be hitting the bug Bumble has listed. Its page says the team is aware and working on it, and that there is no workaround while it does, though the usual troubleshooting steps may help in the meantime.

In that case, report it through the Help Hub so it is on record. Open your Profile, tap the question mark icon in the top right and tap Start Chat. Say which alerts are missing, and include your phone model and operating system.

Why missing alerts cost you matches

A notification you never see is not a small thing on Bumble, because matches do not wait. Bumble says that if neither of you sends a message within 72 hours of matching, the match expires. Each of you gets one opening message before the chat opens up properly, and once one of you has sent it, the other has 72 hours from that point to reply.

So a silent phone can quietly let good matches run out. You think it is a slow week when in fact new matches were sitting there waiting for your first line.

Bumble does give you a way to buy time. Extend adds another 72 hours to a match before it expires, and everyone gets a free Extend. It is worth knowing about, but it is a patch, not a plan.

Open the app on a schedule instead

The real fix is to stop letting the notifications run your dating life at all.

Pick two times a day to open Bumble, say once after lunch and once in the evening. Go to your chats first, answer whatever is waiting, and send an opening message to every new match. Then do a short spell of swiping and close the app. a dating coach's advice for the apps is exactly this kind of routine: a little every day beats a burst of hours once in a while.

You also stop reading meaning into silence. Bumble's own advice is to give people time to reply, because they may be busy or not checking the app often. A man who checks on a schedule answers promptly, rarely lets a match run out, and is not staring at his phone waiting for it to buzz.