Notification

General guidance

Notifications are messages that communicate information to the user.

Format

Title

All notifications have subject titles, which should be short and descriptive. (Example: “Tester-app-02 has crashed.”)

Message

We recommend the body of the notification be contained within two lines. Be descriptive and include any troubleshooting actions or next steps. When possible, communicate the main message using just the title. You can include links within the notification body that redirect the user to next steps.

Dismissal

We recommend that toast notifications automatically disappear after five seconds. Inline notifications are persistent until the user dismisses them. All notifications have at least one method of dismissal (typically, it is a small “x” in the upper right hand corner).

Icons

Icons may provide additional clarity. Icons should be placed to the left of a title. These glyphs (16x16) can be found in the iconography library.

The three icon states

Variations

Notification typePurpose
Toast notificationToasts are a non-modal, time-based window elements used to display short messages; they usually appear at the bottom of the screen and disappear after a few seconds.
Inline notificationInline notifications show up in task flows, to notify users of the status of an action. They usually appear at the top of the primary content area.

Placement

Toast notifications

Toast notifications slide in and out a page from the top-right corner. Actionable notifications do not appear on mobile screen widths.

Toast notification example

Inline notifications

Inline notifications appear near its related item. In forms, we recommend placing the inline notification at the bottom of the form, right before the submission buttons. Depending on the context of the page, inline notifications can appear above the content as well.

Form example with inline notification