How notifications work on FutureLearn

If someone likes or replies to one of your comments on FutureLearn, we'll send you a notification. In this article we'll cover:

• How and when we send you notifications
• How to adjust your general notification settings
• How to mute and unmute notifications for a specific comment

If you're having trouble clearing your notifications, please try the advice in this article.

How and when we send you notifications

You'll get a notification on the site every time something happens on the site which we think you might like to know about. For example:

• You have a new follower
• Someone has liked or replied to one of your comments*
• Someone has replied to a conversation you're subscribed to
• You've become eligible for a Certificate of Achievement

We might also send you notifications to ask if you'd like to take part in short surveys, or to explain new features of the site. For example, you'll get a notification the first time you add something to your wishlist, explaining how you can find it again later.

You can read all your notifications by clicking the bell icon in the top right hand corner of the site.

We'll also email you about new followers and replies to your comments, if you're opted in to receiving notification emails. So you don't get too many emails, we'll round up your comment notifications and send them once a day, and we won't email you about notifications which you've already viewed on the site. 

*To open up a reply from your notifications, click on the 'view conversation' link on the bottom right of the notification box.

How to adjust your general notification settings

You can adjust your settings on your email preferences and settings page. (To access this page, click on your profile picture in the top right hand corner of the page and select 'settings'.) On this page you can adjust:

• Whether the notifications icon should show you how many unread notifications you have
• Whether to receive emails about new followers
• Whether to receive emails about new comments

How to mute and unmute notifications for a specific conversation

You'll get a notification whenever someone else comments on a conversation you have already commented on.

We hope that these are useful most of the time, but if a conversation is getting lots of replies or you don't want to know about the replies, you can turn notifications off by clicking 'Mute this conversation' underneath the first comment.

Muting a conversation won't affect whether anyone else can see it, and it won't affect the notifications other people receive about it.