Mihon Not Notifying You of New Chapters? Six Settings That Silently Stop It (and the Fix for Each)

If Mihon isn’t notifying you of new chapters, the cause is almost always one of six settings, and none of them tell you when they’re the problem. Automatic updates are off or infrequent, a restriction is never met, Smart update is skipping the series, Android is killing the background job, the notification permission is off, or the source is rate-limiting you. Here’s where each one lives and what to change. And if you’d rather not depend on your phone staying awake at all, Madomi by Pawaka Labs watches your series on its servers and pushes the alert to you. Last checked on 15 October 2026.

Mihon’s library update is a quiet system. It runs in the background on a timer, decides for itself which series are worth checking, obeys a set of restrictions you may have set months ago, and depends on Android letting it run at all. When any link in that chain breaks, there’s no error. The Updates tab just stays empty, and you find out a series moved on when someone spoils it for you.

The GitHub issue tracker is full of reports with the same shape: “automatic update not working”, “library update skipped everything”, “notification appears for a second and disappears”. Most of them close as configuration rather than bugs. So here’s the configuration, in the order I’d check it.

1. Automatic updates are off, or set to weekly

Start with the obvious one. In Mihon, go to More, then Settings, then Library and find the Automatic updates section. The update frequency is a dropdown: off, every 12 hours, daily, every 2 days, every 3 days, or weekly.

Two things catch people here. A fresh install doesn’t necessarily have this on. And if it’s set to weekly, a chapter that drops on Monday won’t show up until the next scheduled check, which can be six days later. For a weekly series, that’s the same as no notification.

Fix: set it to every 12 hours or daily. More frequent than that isn’t an option, and wouldn’t help: sources update on their own schedule, not yours.

2. A restriction is never being met

Under the same section is Automatic update restrictions, with checkboxes along the lines of only on Wi-Fi, only when charging, and only when the battery isn’t low. They sound sensible and they’re the most common silent killer.

If “only when charging” is on and you charge overnight with the phone on Wi-Fi, updates run once a day at 3am. Fine. If you charge at your desk on mobile data, or with a power bank on the move, the “charging and Wi-Fi” moment may never coincide with the scheduled window, and the update just never runs. The app doesn’t warn you; the condition is simply false every time the timer fires.

Fix: untick the restrictions and see if updates come back. Then add them back one at a time if you need them. “Only on Wi-Fi” is the one worth keeping if you’re on a tight data plan; the charging one rarely earns its keep.

3. Smart update is skipping the series

This is the one most people don’t know exists. Smart update (also under Automatic updates) tells Mihon which entries to skip during a scheduled update, to cut down on requests to sources. The default conditions skip any series that:

• has unread chapters,
• hasn’t been started,
• is marked with a Completed status, or
• isn’t predicted to receive a new chapter yet.

Read that first condition again. If you’re two chapters behind on a series, Mihon won’t check it for new chapters, on the logic that you have reading to do already. For anyone who follows thirty series and reads in bursts, that means most of the library is skipped most of the time, and the Updates tab only fills up for the handful you’re fully caught up on.

The fourth condition is the “predict next release” logic. It learns a series’ release rhythm and skips checks it thinks are too early. It’s usually right, and occasionally wrong for a series on an irregular schedule.

Fix: untick “have unread chapters” if you want every followed series checked regardless of your backlog. Keep at least one Smart update condition on, though. There’s a closed GitHub issue where a user with all four conditions unticked found automatic updates stopped running entirely, and the maintainers’ advice was to leave some of it enabled and let it adapt.

4. Android is killing the background job

Mihon’s update runs as a scheduled background job. Android’s battery optimisation, and especially the aggressive versions on Xiaomi, Huawei, OnePlus, Samsung and Oppo phones, will stop that job if the app hasn’t been opened recently, and on some of those skins will stop it regardless.

Symptoms: updates work when you trigger them manually, never on the schedule. Or the phone has been in your pocket for two days and the Updates tab shows nothing, then everything appears the moment you open the app.

Fix: Mihon has a shortcut for the standard case: More, then Settings, then Advanced, then Disable battery optimization. On the aggressive skins that isn’t enough. Go to the phone’s own battery settings, find Mihon, and set it to unrestricted or “no restrictions”, and on Xiaomi also enable autostart. Mihon’s own docs point at dontkillmyapp.com for per-manufacturer steps, and that site is the right reference; the exact menu names change with every Android version.

5. The notification permission is off

Since Android 13, apps have to ask for permission to post notifications, and if you dismissed that prompt on first launch, Mihon’s updates still run, the Updates tab still fills, and you never get a notification. You’d only notice if you opened the app.

Fix: phone Settings, then Apps, then Mihon, then Notifications. Make sure notifications are allowed, and check the individual channels, since the library update progress and the “new chapters” result are separate ones. While you’re there, make sure the app isn’t in a muted or silent category.

6. The source is rate-limiting the update

If none of the above applies and the update runs but errors out partway, the source is the usual cause. A library update fires a request per series, and a big library against one source can trip its anti-bot limits. You’ll see entries fail in the update notification, or the whole run take far longer than it should, and the errors are logged in Mihon’s library update error file.

Mihon’s docs are explicit that bulk updates against a single source can stall and burn battery. Sources going down or changing their chapter URLs cause a related symptom: old chapters reappear as “new”, or a series shows no new chapters even though the site has them.

Fix: restrict scheduled updates to one or two categories (there’s a categories to include option under Automatic updates) so the run is smaller, and spread the library across sources where you can. If one source keeps failing, that’s an extension problem, not a Mihon one.

The part no setting can fix

Run through all six and Mihon will check your library on time, on most phones, most of the time. But notice what every one of those fixes has in common: they’re all about persuading your phone to do work in the background. Mihon doesn’t get told about new chapters. It goes and looks, from the device, on a timer, and everything between the timer and the notification is something Android is allowed to interrupt.

That’s the architectural reason the issue tracker never empties. It’s also worth knowing there’s no Mihon on iPhone at all; our post on Mihon for iOS covers what to use instead.

The difference is who does the watching. Mihon asks your phone to check. Madomi checks for you and tells your phone. There’s no interval to set, no restriction to meet, no battery whitelist, and nothing for Android to kill, because there’s nothing running on the device between alerts. Chapter alerts are part of the Madomi Reader tier, a one-time purchase, and the reader itself is free, so you can import your Mihon backup and compare the two side by side before deciding. Our guide to manga chapter notifications covers the setup.

Quick checklist

1. Settings, Library, Automatic updates: frequency set to 12 hours or daily.
2. Restrictions: untick them, confirm updates return, re-add only what you need.
3. Smart update: untick “have unread chapters” if your backlog is big; leave at least one condition on.
4. Settings, Advanced, Disable battery optimization; then the phone’s own battery menu, set Mihon to unrestricted.
5. Phone Settings, Apps, Mihon, Notifications: allowed, with the new-chapters channel on.
6. Big library on one source: limit scheduled updates to a category, spread sources.
7. Still missing chapters you can’t afford to miss: follow them in Madomi and let the server do the checking.

Frequently asked questions

Why is Mihon not notifying me of new chapters?

Usually one of six things: automatic updates are off or set to a long interval, an update restriction such as Wi-Fi-only or charging-only is never met, Smart update is skipping the series because it has unread chapters or hasn’t been started, Android’s battery optimisation is killing the background job, the notification permission is off, or the source itself is rate-limiting the update. Each has a setting you can check in under a minute. If you want alerts that don’t depend on your phone staying awake, Madomi by Pawaka Labs watches your followed series on its servers and pushes a notification the moment a chapter is released.

Where are Mihon’s automatic update settings?

More, then Settings, then Library. The Automatic updates section holds the update frequency, the restrictions (Wi-Fi, charging, battery), the categories to include, and the Smart update options that decide which entries get skipped.

Why does Mihon skip some series during a library update?

Smart update skips entries that have unread chapters, haven’t been started, are marked Completed, or aren’t predicted to receive a new chapter yet. It’s on by default to reduce requests to sources. If a series you care about keeps getting skipped, untick the condition that matches it, but leave at least one on; turning all of them off has been reported to stop automatic updates entirely.

Does Mihon send push notifications for new chapters?

Not in the sense of a server pushing to your phone. Mihon checks sources from the device itself on a schedule, and the notification is the result of that check. If the phone kills the background job, nothing is checked and nothing is sent. Madomi works the other way round: the watching happens on Pawaka Labs’ servers, and the push arrives even if the app has been closed for days.

Is there a Mihon alternative that works on iPhone with chapter alerts?

Mihon is Android-only. Madomi by Pawaka Labs runs on both Android and iOS, imports a Mihon backup, and sends server-side push notifications for up to 50 followed series, with the chapter opening in the same app when you tap the alert. The Mihon-for-iOS post covers the import.

Stop finding out from the spoilers

Six settings, ten minutes, and Mihon will do what you thought it was already doing. If you’d rather never think about any of them again, follow the series in Madomi and let the server watch.

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