Instant notifications

[+sydtam]

I'm using an iPhone 12. How can I set up my instant notifications so I will receive a text message as soon as a new cache publishes?

 

I currently have the instant notifications being sent to my email, but my email doesn't always notify me as soon as I receive one so I am missing out on a lot of FTF opportunities.

 

Any help is appreciated!

[+barefootjeff]

25 minutes ago, sydtam said:

I'm using an iPhone 12. How can I set up my instant notifications so I will receive a text message as soon as a new cache publishes?

 

I currently have the instant notifications being sent to my email, but my email doesn't always notify me as soon as I receive one so I am missing out on a lot of FTF opportunities.

 

You can't set up for text messages directly on the site. Some people use third party email-to-text services but they can be problematic due to the html in the notifcation emails and the character limit of text messages.

 

Maybe you need to figure out why your email doesn't always notify you. I'm not an iPhone user, but is there a setting in the email app for how frequently it checks for new emails? Or are you simply not receiving some emails, in which case you might need to whitelist geocaching.com either with your service provider or in the app, depending on where it's being rejected.

[+sydtam]

Jeff- I'll be the first to admit I'm not tech savvy, so I appreciate your advice. The iPhone doesn't have a setting for how often it checks for new emails that I can find, so I'll try googling that to see if I can find anything. I have all the current settings turned on as far as email alerts and notifications.

 

Email updates fine if I open the app up to check, but usually the caches publish in between me checking for new emails. 

 

You answered my question about texts, and that's what I was looking for. Thanks for your help!

[+thebruce0]

Gmail provides push notifications of incoming email. If you can set up a manner to receive email notifications to a gmail account, you can receive near-instantaneous alerts of incoming email; just need to watch for new publish emails, since it'll include all geocaching emails.  That's what I do (emails are pushed to my primary personal email and to my gmail for push notifications)

[+sydtam]

I have a gmail account, but it's not linked to my geocaching account. I know geocaching allows more than one email account in their notification section, so I'll try that and see what happens. Sure can't hurt anything!

 

Thanks theBruce0!

[+CAVinoGal]

I set up a gmail account with my geocaching name, so everything geocaching goes to that one account, and that's all I use that account for.  Since gmail accounts are free, it seemed to make sense to me to set up an account just for geocaching.  All notifications of new caches, log activity, watchlist emails, TB activity - all goes through that one account.

 

As an added "bonus" - I set up a special ringtone for emails from that account, so when I hear that, I know it's a geocaching email and I can check it right away to see if it's a new cache, or message center notification, or watchlist notification....keeps it separate from all the other emails and notifications I get.

 

  It works for me - YMMV.

[+barefootjeff]

14 minutes ago, CAVinoGal said:

I set up a gmail account with my geocaching name, so everything geocaching goes to that one account, and that's all I use that account for.  Since gmail accounts are free, it seemed to make sense to me to set up an account just for geocaching.  All notifications of new caches, log activity, watchlist emails, TB activity - all goes through that one account.

 

I did much the same, setting up a separate geocaching email address just for caching. When I created my EarthCache I added that to my phone so I could respond immediately to people's answers, but after the initial burst of finds that quickly tapered off and it started getting annoying having my phone interrupting me at work just for someone logging one of my caches or a cache on my watchlist, so I removed that and just monitor my geocaching account on my PC when I'm at home. FTF races around here generally happen at snail's pace and if I'm not at home when a new cache is published I probably wouldn't be able to go out and hunt for it anyway, and if I see the email when I get home and go out for it the next day I'll probably still get FTF, with 2TF arriving a few weeks later.