Alerts reference
Every notification RoamGuard is capable of sending is listed here, with what triggers it, what it says, how often it can repeat, and whether it is allowed to interrupt a Focus. All of them are local. Nothing is sent to a server, because there is no server.
Cycle threshold alerts
A threshold alert fires the first time your usage crosses that share of the allowance for a pool, in that billing cycle. The thresholds you can switch on are fixed; which of them are on is entirely yours.
On a fresh install 50, 80, 90, 95 and 100% are on. 70 and 98 are available and off.
| Crossing | Title | Body | Through Focus |
|---|---|---|---|
| 50% | 50% of your Home data used | 10.0 GB left in this cycle. | No |
| 70% | 70% of your Home data used | 6.0 GB left in this cycle. | No |
| 80% | 80% of your Roaming data used | 1.0 GB left in this cycle. | No |
| 90% | 90% of your Roaming data used | 0.5 GB left in this cycle. | No |
| 95% | 95% of your Roaming data used | 0.25 GB left in this cycle. | No |
| 98% | 98% of your Roaming data used | 0.1 GB left in this cycle. | No |
| 100% | Limit reached | You have used all of your Roaming allowance — 5.2 GB so far this cycle. | Yes |
The figures above are examples on a 20 GB home allowance and a 5 GB roaming allowance; the wording is the app's. The pool name in the title is “Home” or “Roaming”, because the two pools alert independently.
A pool set to unlimited has no threshold to cross, so it sends no threshold alerts at all.
Daily budget alerts
A daily budget is a ceiling you set for yourself for a single day. It is optional and off unless you switch it on during setup, where a slider covers 0.1 to 10 GB in 0.1 GB steps. The setup screen also shows what your allowance works out to per day if you spread it evenly over the cycle, so you have something to aim at.
| Crossing | Title | Body | Through Focus |
|---|---|---|---|
| 50% of budget | 50% of today's budget used | 0.5 GB used today. | No |
| 75% of budget | 75% of today's budget used | 0.75 GB used today. | No |
| 100% of budget | Daily budget passed | You have used 1.1 GB today, more than you planned. | No |
Budget alerts are scoped to the day, so crossing 50% today does not stop the 50% alert firing tomorrow.
Forecast alert
This is the one that arrives before anything has gone wrong. It fires when the projection lands past the allowance while you are still inside it — the moment where changing your behaviour is still free.
Heavy day alert
It needs a recent average to compare against, so it stays quiet on a device that has only just started measuring.
Daily summary
The summary is scheduled by the system on a repeating calendar trigger rather than computed in advance, which is why it invites you in rather than quoting a figure that might be stale.
Focus, and why only one alert is allowed through
Exactly one alert is marked Time Sensitive: reaching 100% of an allowance. Everything else is delivered at the ordinary active level and waits its turn like any other notification.
Going over an allowance costs real money, often per megabyte and often while abroad, so that one is worth interrupting for. A 50% alert is not. If every alert claimed to be urgent, iOS users would turn the whole app's notifications off — which would silence the one that mattered.
Time Sensitive delivery still respects your Focus configuration: iOS shows a Time Sensitive notification during a Focus only when that Focus is set to allow them. RoamGuard cannot and does not override that.
The switch is Settings › Alerts › “Alert me even during Focus”, described in the app as “Only when your allowance is fully used. Going over costs real money, so this one gets through.” Turn it off and the 100% alert becomes an ordinary notification like the rest.
Not a Critical Alert
RoamGuard deliberately does not use Apple's Critical Alerts, which ignore silent mode and Do Not Disturb entirely. That requires a special entitlement Apple grants only on request, and without it the behaviour quietly degrades — which would make the setting a lie. Time Sensitive is what the app actually has, so Time Sensitive is what it claims.
How often an alert can repeat
Each alert is recorded once it has been delivered, and the record is scoped — cycle alerts carry the cycle, daily alerts carry the date.
Without the cycle in the record, “80%” would fire once in your first month and never again. The delivery record is pruned to the current cycle and the current day, so it does not grow forever.
Pause alerts on Wi-Fi
Settings › Alerts › “Pause alerts on Wi-Fi” suppresses alerts while Wi-Fi is the active path — you are not spending plan data, so there is nothing to act on.
One exception: an alert marked Time Sensitive still gets through. If you have genuinely exhausted an allowance, that is true whether or not you happen to be on Wi-Fi at this moment, and it costs money either way.
The setting is off by default.
Sounds
Two independent choices, so the alert that costs money can be louder than the routine ones.
| Setting | Applies to | Default |
|---|---|---|
| Threshold alerts | Every alert except reaching 100% | Chime |
| Limit reached | Reaching 100% of an allowance | Alert |
Each can be set to Standard (the system notification sound), Chime, Alert or Silent. Chime and Alert are short audio files bundled in the app; nothing is downloaded.
Play a preview plays the currently selected sound and then tells you what it did — which sound played, or that Silent is selected, or that notifications are off for RoamGuard. It also works while the app is open, which a notification normally would not: iOS suppresses an app's own notifications while that app is frontmost unless the app explicitly asks for them, and RoamGuard does.
That last detail is not decorative. The preview button could not work by construction on any device, in the first submitted build, and it is fixed.
Alerts while the app is open
They appear. Banner, list and sound, exactly as they would if the app were closed.
This matters more than it sounds: the moment someone worried about roaming data is most likely to cross a threshold is while they are staring at the dashboard. Without the app asking for foreground presentation, iOS would swallow that alert with no banner, no sound and no error.
Alerts are grouped into one thread per pool, so a run of Roaming alerts stacks together in Notification Centre instead of scattering.
Changing all of this
The thresholds were originally settable only once, during onboarding, while onboarding's own footer promised they could be changed in Settings at any time. Settings now shows the same control, so the promise and the app agree.
If notifications are denied
RoamGuard asks for notification permission once. Declining it is a supported way to use the app.
If you allow notifications but leave Time Sensitive Notifications off for RoamGuard, every alert including the 100% one is delivered quietly and waits behind a Focus.