Introduction

@byo-oss/notifications adds in-app notifications to a better-auth app. It is a better-auth plugin: one migration, one React component, and the notifications live in your own database, addressed to your better-auth users.

Community plugin — not affiliated with the better-auth team.

Formerly better-inbox. The API is the same, so change your imports. See Upgrading.

What you get

• A better-auth plugin, not a platform. No services to deploy, no dashboard SaaS. The notification table lives in your own database via better-auth’s adapter (drizzle, prisma, kysely, whatever you already use).
• Addressed to users, not email addresses. notify({ userId }) uses your better-auth user ids. Delete a user and their notifications go with them.
• Organization-aware. Notify a whole org, optionally filtered by role, through the better-auth organization plugin: notify({ organizationId, roles: ["owner", "admin"] }). See Notify an organization.
• Email when it matters. Route a notification type to email and it goes out only if the notification is still unread after a delay, or right away if the user isn’t in the app. It sends through any @byo-oss/mailer adapter: Wraps on your own AWS SES account, your own SES client, or a provider such as Resend or Postmark. See Email if unread.
• One React component. <InboxButton /> gives you the bell, unread badge, and inbox panel, styled with shadcn CSS variables. It works with any shadcn theme, has zero runtime dependencies, and doesn’t require shadcn. See React components.

Not included (yet)

Notifications are in-app first. Email follows a notification that went unread, and it uses the inbox’s own read state to decide. Notification preferences, push, SMS, digests and realtime websockets aren’t here yet. Polling, plus a refetch when the tab becomes visible, covers the badge.

If you need full multi-channel delivery pipelines today, look at Novu or betternotify. For when to move, see Outgrowing this.

Where to go next

• Quickstart adds the plugin, the bell and a first notification.
• Options and Schema list the settings and tables.