Understanding Your Assistant Alerts
The Assistant communicates with you throughout the day through a feed of alerts.
Some are proactive briefings, some fire when a threshold is crossed, and some are pinned while a time-sensitive situation is active. The Assistant will also display any custom alerts you have created.
Feed alerts appear chronologically in the Assistant and expire after a limited time.
Morning Forecast
Appears at the start of your work day. Shows your scheduled meetings (if you have a connected calendar), your Focus Zones for the day, and whether you're realistically on track to hit your Focus Work Goal given how much available time you have.
Focus Work Goal Alert
Fires when you've hit your daily Focus Work Goal. Also shows your progress toward that goal for the current week.
Custom Goals or Alerts
Fires when you trigger any custom goal or alert you've set up in Goals & Alerts. See Using Goals for how to create these.
Attention Alert
Appears when RescueTime detects you've been context-switching more than usual: a pattern of frequent shifts between productive and unproductive activity that fragments focus. You'll be prompted to start a Focus Session. You can toggle this on or off under Account Settings → Notifications.
Balance Alert
Appears when you're working outside your scheduled work hours. A reminder that time spent now isn't counting toward your Focus Work Goal unless you click Back to Work in the Assistant. You can toggle this on or off under Account Settings → Notifications.
End of Day Report
Delivered at the time you've set in your work schedule settings. Shows your total Focus Work for the day, how often you shifted to distracting activity, and your top activities in both your most productive and most distracting categories.
Weekly Review
Delivered at the end of your work week. Shows total hours logged, your best times to focus, Focus Work total, distraction count, and meetings logged. A good moment to reflect before the next week starts.
These alerts appear in yellow while they're active. They're time-bound and typically ask you to perform an action. They are dismissed automatically when they are no longer relevant.
Focus Zone
Appears when you're in an identified Focus Zone, a window of at least one uninterrupted hour that's well-suited for deep work. Includes the option to start a Focus Session. Dismisses when the zone ends. See Focus Zones for more detail.
Join Meeting
Appears when a calendar event is about to start or is currently active. If the event contains a Zoom, Google Meet, or Microsoft Teams link, a Join Meeting button takes you directly there. Dismisses when the meeting ends. Requires a connected calendar.
Allow notifications in your OS settings
In addition to the Assistant, RescueTime delivers alerts through your operating system's notification system. You need to allow them there before they'll appear on your desktop.
On macOS:
- Go to Apple Menu → System Settings → Notifications
- Scroll to RescueTime and click it
- Toggle Allow Notifications on
On Windows:
- Open Start Menu → Settings → System → Notifications & actions
- Scroll to RescueTime and click it
- Toggle Notifications on
💡 If desktop notifications are enabled but not appearing, check that RescueTime is running and that Do Not Disturb (macOS) or Focus Assist (Windows) is not active.
Turning individual alerts on or off
Each built-in alert type can be toggled independently. Go to Account Settings → Notifications and use the toggles next to each alert type to enable or disable it.
The Assistant sounds can be toggled separately from the gear icon inside the Assistant under Status sounds.