Tips & Tricks: Send ChoreOps Alerts to ntfy

📣 Send ChoreOps Alerts to ntfy

⚠️ Note: This is not native ChoreOps notification support. It is a manual Home Assistant workaround that forwards ChoreOps-related events to ntfy using Home Assistant automations and a notify service.

This approach can be useful if you want simple external alerts delivered to an ntfy topic, but it does not use the built-in ChoreOps notification workflow.

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📌 When This Is a Good Fit

This pattern works well if you want:

• A shared household alert topic
• Self-hosted push notifications outside the Home Assistant Companion app
• Simple one-way notifications for dashboards, kiosks, or shared devices
• External alert forwarding without changing ChoreOps itself

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⚠️ What You Do Not Get With This Approach

Because this is an external automation pattern, it does not include the native ChoreOps notification features:

• No ChoreOps action buttons
• No claim, approve, or disapprove callbacks
• No notification replacement or smart clear behavior
• No built-in parity with ChoreOps mobile notification lifecycle handling
• No automatic reuse of ChoreOps per-user notification configuration

Use the built-in ChoreOps notification service path when you want the full interactive workflow.

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🧱 Step 1: Set Up ntfy

You can use either:

• A hosted ntfy instance
• Your own self-hosted ntfy server

For a self-hosted setup, a common Docker example looks like this:

services:
  ntfy:
    image: binwiederhier/ntfy:latest
    container_name: ntfy
    ports:
      - "8090:80"
    command:
      - serve
    restart: unless-stopped

After the container is running, confirm you can reach your ntfy server in a browser or from the ntfy mobile app.

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🏠 Step 2: Create a Home Assistant Notify Service for ntfy

One simple way is to create a REST-based notify service in configuration.yaml.

notify:
  - platform: rest
    name: ntfy_notifications
    resource: http://YOUR_NTFY_HOST:8090/choreops-alerts
    method: POST_JSON
    title_param_name: title
    message_param_name: message

If your ntfy instance requires authentication, add the necessary headers supported by your deployment.

Example:

notify:
  - platform: rest
    name: ntfy_notifications
    resource: http://YOUR_NTFY_HOST:8090/choreops-alerts
    method: POST_JSON
    title_param_name: title
    message_param_name: message
    headers:
      Authorization: "Bearer YOUR_TOKEN"

Restart Home Assistant or reload your notify configuration, then test the service in Developer Tools.

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🧪 Step 3: Verify the Notify Service Works

Before wiring in ChoreOps automations, send a simple test message.

action: notify.ntfy_notifications
data:
  title: "ChoreOps Test"
  message: "ntfy is receiving Home Assistant notifications"

If that works, the ntfy path is ready.

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🤖 Step 4: Create Automations Based on ChoreOps Entities

The most reliable pattern is to watch ChoreOps entities and then send a plain ntfy alert when the state changes.

If you want more examples of entity monitoring patterns, templates, and automation building blocks, also review the Template Cookbook for Chores, Rewards, and Approvals.

Examples:

• Chore becomes overdue
• Reward is claimed
• Approver action is needed
• Daily summary reminder

Example: Overdue chore alert

alias: ChoreOps ntfy overdue alert
triggers:
  - trigger: state
    entity_id: sensor.alex_chore_status_take_out_trash
    to: overdue
actions:
  - action: notify.ntfy_notifications
    data:
      title: "Chore overdue"
      message: "Take Out Trash is overdue for Alex"
mode: single

Example: Pending approval alert

alias: ChoreOps ntfy approval alert
triggers:
  - trigger: state
    entity_id: sensor.alex_chore_status_clean_room
    to: claimed
actions:
  - action: notify.ntfy_notifications
    data:
      title: "Approval needed"
      message: "Alex claimed Clean Room and it is waiting for approval"
mode: single

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🧩 Suggested Topic Patterns

Depending on how you want to organize alerts in ntfy, you can use different topics such as:

• choreops-alerts
• choreops-overdue
• choreops-approvals
• family-ops

Using separate topics can help if you want different subscribers for different alert types.

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🛠️ Troubleshooting

Notify service does not exist

• Confirm the notify configuration loaded successfully
• Restart Home Assistant after editing YAML
• Check Developer Tools for the created service name

ntfy receives nothing

• Confirm the ntfy server URL is reachable from Home Assistant
• Confirm the topic name in the URL is correct
• Check authentication headers if your server is protected

Alerts send, but actions do not appear

• This is expected
• This workflow sends plain external alerts only and does not support native ChoreOps action buttons

Language does not match the ChoreOps user language

• This is also expected unless you build language-aware automation logic yourself
• This path does not reuse the native ChoreOps translated notification pipeline

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📌 Recommendation

Use this pattern if you want simple ntfy-based awareness alerts.

Use the built-in ChoreOps mobile notification path if you want:

• interactive action buttons
• translated notification content
• smart notification replacement
• automatic callback handling

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Last Updated: May 2026 (community ntfy workaround)