Notifications
People-only badges
Count only emails written by people in badges and alerts, without the noise of newsletters and automated notifications.
A receipt, a newsletter, a sign-in code: useful, but not urgent. With this setting, they no longer buzz your phone or inflate your counts. Only emails written by people count.
What the setting changes
When it’s on (the default), emails sorted into Notifications or Newsletters by the smart inbox:
- don’t count toward unread counts in the sidebar;
- don’t count toward the Heron app icon badge;
- don’t trigger notifications, on desktop or mobile.
They still arrive in your inbox, grouped in their bundles. Nothing is lost.
An email that hasn’t been sorted yet counts as coming from a person.
Turn it on or off
- On desktop: Settings → General → Inbox → Count only people.
- On mobile: Settings → Inbox → Badges and alerts: people only.
The setting is synced across all your devices.
Good to know: this setting only works with the smart inbox. In the classic view, every email counts and notifies.
An important email didn’t ring?
It was probably sorted into Notifications or Newsletters. On desktop, right-click it → Move to → People: future emails from that sender will notify you.
To set notifications account by account and device by device, see Desktop notifications and Mobile notifications.