Bell icon

When to use it

The bell is notifications, full stop — resist using it for general alerts or warnings, which belong to the triangle. The unread state is a filled dot on the bell's shoulder, and the muted state a slash through it; both exist as drawn variants in most of these sets, so you rarely need to compose your own badge at icon scale.

Reach for the bell for notifications — the inbox of alerts a user can open, and the toggle for whether they receive them. A dot or count on the bell signals unread items. Keep it distinct from the warning triangle, which flags a problem right now; the bell is a channel of updates, the triangle is a single caution. Muted or slashed bells read clearly as 'notifications off'.

• Reaching for Alert triangle? Reach for the triangle to warn about a specific problem rather than to represent the notifications channel.
• Reaching for Message? Reach for the speech bubble for conversations and messages rather than the general notifications feed.