ntfy tags not being passed through X-Tags in Apprise

[kimimaru4000]

Notification Service(s) Impacted

ntfy

What happened

This is a follow-up from #1520.

I have yet to find a way to get ntfy tags working in Apprise. Tags are still working when invoking ntfy directly - just not through Apprise. Passing ntfy tags to Apprise causes Apprise to ignore the tags.

My full configuration is as follows:

urls:
  - ntfy://myntfyserver/test?priority=high&tags=warning&image=no

The logs below indicate that no tags are passed to the X-Tags header.

Apprise URL(s) involved (redact secrets)

ntfy://myntfyserver/test?priority=high&tags=warning&image=no

Steps to reproduce

1. Try to use an ntfy tag with Apprise

Observed result

(Invoked via Apprise)

Expected result

(Invoked via ntfy)

Environment

• Apprise version: Apprise 1.9.7 in a Docker container
• Python version: 3.12.3
• OS and distribution: Kubuntu 24.04.4 LTS
• Install method: docker
• If using Docker: caronc/apprise:v1.3.1

Logs (redact secrets)

apprise -vvv --body="Test Message" --tag=all --config=http://myntfyserver/cfg/test

2026-03-07 09:52:15,184 - DEBUG - Language set to en
2026-03-07 09:52:15,184 - DEBUG - Loading configuration: http://myntfyserver/cfg/test
2026-03-07 09:52:15,271 - DEBUG - Configuration Plugin 3(s) and 4 Schema(s) loaded in 0.0868s
2026-03-07 09:52:15,272 - DEBUG - HTTP POST URL: http://myntfyserver/cfg/test (cert_verify=True)
2026-03-07 09:52:15,412 - DEBUG - Notification Plugin 126(s) and 174 Schema(s) loaded in 0.1264s
2026-03-07 09:52:15,413 - DEBUG - Loaded URL: ntfy://myntfyserver/test?priority=high&mode=private&image=no&auth=token&format=text&overflow=upstream
2026-03-07 09:52:15,413 - INFO - Loaded 1 entries from http://myntfyserver/cfg/test/?encoding=utf-8&cache=yes
2026-03-07 09:52:15,413 - DEBUG - ntfy POST URL: http://myntfyserver (cert_verify=True)
2026-03-07 09:52:15,414 - DEBUG - ntfy Payload: {'topic': 'test', 'message': 'Test Message'}
2026-03-07 09:52:15,414 - DEBUG - ntfy Headers: {'User-Agent': 'Apprise', 'Authorization': 'Bearer [REDACTED]', 'Content-Type': 'application/json', 'X-Priority': 'high'}
2026-03-07 09:52:15,424 - INFO - Sent ntfy notification to 'http://myntfyserver'.

[caronc]

the Loaded URL in your example does not identify tags= in the URL

2026-03-07 09:52:15,413 - DEBUG - Loaded URL: ntfy://myntfyserver/test?priority=high&mode=private&image=no&auth=token&format=text&overflow=upstream

This tells me you're missing &tags= in your URL.

I made just a fake config using the data you shared:

# delme.cfg
ntfy://myntfyserver/test?priority=high&tags=warning&image=no

apprise -c delme.cfg -b test -vvv

Produced:

2026-03-10 20:06:39,119 - DEBUG - Language set to en
2026-03-10 20:06:39,119 - DEBUG - Loading configuration: delme.cfg
2026-03-10 20:06:39,167 - DEBUG - Configuration Plugin 3(s) and 4 Schema(s) loaded in 0.0481s
2026-03-10 20:06:39,291 - DEBUG - Notification Plugin 126(s) and 174 Schema(s) loaded in 0.1210s
2026-03-10 20:06:39,291 - DEBUG - Loaded URL: ntfy://myntfyserver/test?priority=high&mode=private&image=no&auth=basic&tags=warning&format=text&overflow=upstream
2026-03-10 20:06:39,291 - INFO - Loaded 1 entries from file://delme.cfg?encoding=utf-8&cache=yes
2026-03-10 20:06:39,292 - DEBUG - ntfy POST URL: http://myntfyserver (cert_verify=True)
2026-03-10 20:06:39,292 - DEBUG - ntfy Payload: {'topic': 'test', 'message': 'test'}
2026-03-10 20:06:39,292 - DEBUG - ntfy Headers: {'User-Agent': 'Apprise', 'Content-Type': 'application/json', 'X-Priority': 'high', 'X-Tags': 'warning'}
2026-03-10 20:06:40,426 - WARNING - A Connection error occurred sending ntfy:http://myntfyserver notification.
2026-03-10 20:06:40,426 - DEBUG - Socket Exception: HTTPConnectionPool(host='myntfyserver', port=80): Max retries exceeded with url: / (Caused by NameResolutionError("HTTPConnection(host='myntfyserver', port=80): Failed to resolve 'myntfyserver' ([Errno -2] Name or service not known)"))

As i expect the command above to fail, the key takeaway is that the URL it assembled includes the tags= line (so it did parse it properly), and you can see it assemble X-Tags correctly in the headers.

The only thing I can think of is that perhaps you're using a very, very old version of Apprise and/or Apprise-API. Or your URL is malformed... doublecheck that you only have one question mark ? and proper & delimiters in the URL.

[kimimaru4000]

Hi @caronc thanks for your reply. This revealed to me that the problem occurs only in the YAML configuration. When I use a plain text configuration like you demonstrated, it works as expected. The YAML fails to parse the tags.

[caronc]

This is not true @kimimaru4000 ; here is the same test using a yaml file:

# delme.yaml
urls:
   - ntfy://myntfyserver/test?priority=high&tags=warning&image=no

Produced:

l2g@localhost:~/Development/apprise$ apprise -c delme.yaml -b test -vvv
2026-03-11 17:25:31,036 - DEBUG - Language set to en
2026-03-11 17:25:31,036 - DEBUG - Loading configuration: delme.yaml
2026-03-11 17:25:31,082 - DEBUG - Configuration Plugin 3(s) and 4 Schema(s) loaded in 0.0453s
2026-03-11 17:25:31,214 - DEBUG - Notification Plugin 126(s) and 174 Schema(s) loaded in 0.1288s
2026-03-11 17:25:31,214 - DEBUG - Loaded URL: ntfy://myntfyserver/test?priority=high&mode=private&image=no&auth=basic&tags=warning&format=text&overflow=upstream
2026-03-11 17:25:31,214 - INFO - Loaded 1 entries from file://delme.yaml?encoding=utf-8&cache=yes
2026-03-11 17:25:31,214 - DEBUG - ntfy POST URL: http://myntfyserver (cert_verify=True)
2026-03-11 17:25:31,214 - DEBUG - ntfy Payload: {'topic': 'test', 'message': 'test'}
2026-03-11 17:25:31,215 - DEBUG - ntfy Headers: {'User-Agent': 'Apprise', 'Content-Type': 'application/json', 'X-Priority': 'high', 'X-Tags': 'warning'}
...

The X-Tag still gets passed along

[kimimaru4000]

Maybe there's a disconnect somewhere because the YAML just simply isn't including the tags for me. I'll provide more details of my setup and what I noticed:

• I'm using an authentication token with the ntfy URL, and I had excluded it before because I didn't think it mattered. So the actual URL is closer to: ntfy://my_token@myntfyserver/test?priority=high&tags=warning&image=no.
• I'm using the apprise-api Docker container, having just updated to v1.3.2.
• I'm configuring it through the web UI. When I save the YAML configuration, it saves it as a .yml file instead of .yaml.
• Whether I send a notification with the YAML configuration through the web UI or apprise CLI, the tags are not passed through. Changing the file extension to .yaml acts the same aside from it disappearing from the web UI configuration, which is looking for .yml.

I think the key difference is the authentication token with ntfy. With the plain text configuration, the ntfy tags work as expected.

[caronc]

So I owe you an appology; as it turns out tags= is 100% conflicting with an Apprise-API configuration as the API uses that token as well. With that... @kimimaru4000 , I'm Sorry.

The best way forward was to update ntfy:// Apprise plugin to use xtags= instead of tags=. Since tags= in all other circumstances and configurations, i'll leave it for backwards compatibility, but am going to heavily document/advise against it's use.

If you could test out the branch (see attached PR above), that would be great.

the only issue that 'may' be is apprise-go is compiled, and this change is being made to apprise. It'll need to be backported to apprise-go down the road to use it there unfortunately. But the devs managing that version are pretty great, I'm sure they'll get it :)