Access Tokens

In addition to username/password auth, ntfy also provides authentication via access tokens. Access tokens are useful to avoid having to configure your password across multiple publishing/subscribing applications. For instance, you may want to use a dedicated token to publish from your backup host, and one from your home automation system.

Info

As of today, access tokens grant users full access to the user account. Aside from changing the password, and deleting the account, every action can be performed with a token. Granular access tokens are on the roadmap, but not yet implemented.

The ntfy token command can be used to manage access tokens for users. Tokens can have labels, and they can expire automatically (or never expire). Each user can have up to 20 tokens (hardcoded).

Example commands (type ntfy token --help or ntfy token COMMAND --help for more details):

ntfy token list                      # Shows list of tokens for all users
ntfy token list phil                 # Shows list of tokens for user phil
ntfy token add phil                  # Create token for user phil which never expires
ntfy token add --expires=2d phil     # Create token for user phil which expires in 2 days
ntfy token remove phil tk_th2sxr...  # Delete token

 

Creating an access token:

$ ntfy token add --expires=30d --label="backups" phil
$ ntfy token list
user phil
- tk_AgQdq7mVBoFD37zQVN29RhuMzNIz2 (backups), expires 15 Mar 23 14:33 EDT, accessed from 0.0.0.0 at 13 Feb 23 13:33 EST

 

Once an access token is created, you can use it to authenticate against the ntfy server, e.g. when you publish or subscribe to topics. To learn how, check out authenticate via access tokens.