Notifications

Notifications let you know when a game starts or ends, when it's your turn, and when someone @mentions your username in game chat (but not the main page chat).

18xx.games supports two types of notification delivery: email and webhook. You can also disable notifications completely. Visit the user settings page to change your notification settings.

New accounts have no notifications enabled and you must opt in. Email notifications have several limitations (see below). If you run into these limitations, consider switching to webhook notifications.

Email Notifications

Email notifications are sent to the email address associated with your profile. Check your spam folder or allowlist [email protected] if it seems like emails aren't arriving.

Note: Emails at the following domains will not receive notifications, as Microsoft blocks our email sending service.

• msn.com
• hotmail.com
• outlook.com
• live.com
• passport.com

Email notifications are suppressed while the site is open on your computer. This behavior prevents the site from sending large amounts of emails during active games. If it seems like you're not receiving emails when you should be, check to see if the site is open in a background tab or on your phone.

Email notifications are also suppressed if they happen too soon after another notification.

Email notifications are not sent for pinned games (games that broke due to bug fixes or other code changes).

Browser Notifications

You can receive auditory and popup notifications in your browser when a game starts:

1. Install the Distill browser extension
2. Load 18xx.games and click the Distill extension button, then the + Monitor parts of page button to create a 'Monitor'
3. Use 'element selector' to choose the Created element of the game card, then click 'Save selections'. This will open the 'Watchlist' page
4. Set the Interval for your new Monitor to 5 or 10 seconds and click 'Save'
5. By default your browser will play a sound and generate a notification when the Monitor triggers
6. The extension will periodically open/close a browser tab in the background to refresh the 18xx.games home page until the Monitor triggers or is disabled.

This works because the Created timestamp element changes to Updated when the game starts

Webhook Notifications

Webhook notifications can be delivered to any service that supports webhooks. This includes Slack, Discord, Telegram, and more.

18xx Games Slack Notifications

The community-operated 18oggs.slack.com supports pre-configured Slack notifications for its members

1. Join the 18oggs Slack workspace via invite link
2. Find your Slack User ID and enter it into the Webhook User ID field. It will start with a U and be in the form U12345678. This is not your username.
3. Your notifications will appear in the #18xxgamesnotifications channel. This is a shared channel with other people's game notifications.
4. (optional) Configure Slack to only notify when you are mentioned to make it easier to see your own notifications.

Discord Notifications

There is a community-operated Discord Server that supports pre-configured Discord notifications for its members, see instructions here

1. Create your own server or utilize an existing server where you have administrator privileges.

2. Obtain the webhook URL for the Discord channel on the server where you want notifications to be sent and enter it into the Webhook URL field

3. Find your Discord User ID and enter it into the Webhook User ID field. It will be an eighteen-digit number. This is not your username.

4. Your notifications will appear in the Discord channel configured above.

Telegram Notifications

You can receive notifications in Telegram.

1. Open chat with @Notify18xxGamesBot in Telegram
2. Click "Start"
3. The bot will send you all the settings you need to enter on Profile page. It's important to copy & paste Webhook URL correctly. Webhook User ID can be filled with any value as it's not used.
4. Notifications will be sent to your Telegram by the bot

Google Chat

You can send notifications to a given Space in Google Chat.

Note: Space webhooks are only available to Google Workspace users.

1. Create a Space or use an existing one where you have Space Manager privileges.
2. Create a Webhook and copy the URL into the Webhook URL field.
3. Open https://get.google.com/albumarchive. A long number will be added to the end of the URL in the address bar. Copy that number into the Webhook User ID field
4. Your notifications will appear in the Space configured above.

Custom Notifications

You can configure notifications to any Slack workspace where you have admin privileges by setting the Webhook URL and Webhook User ID fields to the appropriate values that Slack provides. Note that Slack only allows inbound webhooks to send messages to channels (not direct messages).

For developers, you can integrate with any server that accepts inbound webhooks by setting Webhook URL to the appropriate endpoint. The inbound webhook payload contains a JSON blob under a top-level text field containing notification data.