Microsoft 365 Copilot’s push notifications: when AI insights land on the lock screen

Microsoft 365 Copilot’s mobile app is about to start proactively summarising a user’s emails, Teams activity and files, then pushing that summary to their phone as a notification, before anyone has asked for it.

That’s a genuine shift in how Copilot works: instead of waiting for a prompt, it decides on its own what’s worth surfacing, and does so somewhere far more visible than an app window, a phone’s lock screen.

What’s changing

Public preview begins worldwide in mid-July 2026 and completes by mid-August. General availability follows, beginning mid-August and completing by mid-September 2026 (Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 560339). It applies to the Copilot mobile app on iOS and Android.

Users with both a Microsoft 365 Copilot licence and mobile notifications enabled will start receiving proactive notifications built around common scenarios, including “Your Day at a Glance,” a personalised summary of emails, Teams activity and files, and “Items waiting for you,” a summary of open action items.

Selecting a notification opens the Copilot app with a prompt already run and a response already generated, using what Microsoft describes as Copilot memory to keep the insight contextual and personalised. The same prompts are also available inside the app as suggested prompts, so nothing here is exclusive to the notification itself.

The feature is enabled by default wherever both conditions, licence and notifications, are already met.

Quick summary

Microsoft 365 Copilot’s mobile app will send proactive push notifications, rolling out from mid-July 2026, covering:

  • personalised scenarios like “Your Day at a Glance” and “Items waiting for you,” built from emails, Teams activity and files
  • notifications generated using Copilot memory, without the user having asked a question first
  • selecting a notification opens the Copilot app with a pre-run prompt and response already waiting
  • enabled by default for anyone with a Copilot licence and mobile notifications turned on, with no admin control available

But this isn’t just another interface update. It’s Copilot initiating AI-generated summaries of your organisation’s data and pushing them to personal mobile devices, by default, as a notification that can be previewed on a lock screen. Worth a proper look before it reaches your users, not just a helpdesk heads-up.

Why this matters

Microsoft’s own compliance review flags four separate considerations for this one, more than we’ve seen on any update in this series so far, and each is worth reading properly rather than treating as boilerplate:

  • This is Copilot acting without being asked. Every other Copilot interaction in this series has been the user initiating a prompt. This one runs a query and generates a response on the user’s behalf, triggered by Copilot’s own judgement of what’s relevant, not by a request.
  • It’s a new communication channel, not just a new feature. Microsoft explicitly describes this as a new system-generated channel from the Copilot app to a user’s personal device, which is a different category of thing to a new button in an existing app.
  • The content can surface outside the app entirely. A push notification summarising emails, meetings or outstanding tasks can appear as a lock screen preview, depending on the user’s device settings, well before anyone has authenticated to see it. That’s true of most notifications, but it matters more when the content is an AI-generated summary of work data rather than “you have a new message.”
  • Control sits with the individual user’s device, not with IT. Notifications can be turned off, but only from the Microsoft 365 Copilot mobile app’s own settings on that person’s phone. There’s no tenant-level switch, and no way for admins to see who has notifications on.

None of this means the feature is unsafe. It means it’s the first update in this series that genuinely touches mobile device policy as well as Copilot governance, and Microsoft has said as much directly, recommending organisations “review internal notification or mobile device policies if applicable.”

Microsoft Copilot

Who’s affected

  • Any user with a Microsoft 365 Copilot licence who has mobile notifications enabled on iOS or Android
  • Anyone using a personal or shared device for work email and Teams access, where lock screen previews may be visible to others
  • IT, security and compliance teams who maintain mobile device or BYOD policies, since this is the first Copilot update to genuinely intersect with that area

What we’d recommend doing now

No admin action is required, but this is worth treating as more than routine change communication:

  1. Review your mobile device and notification policies now, specifically whether lock screen content previews are restricted on managed devices, and whether that policy extends to personally owned devices used for work.
  2. Brief users on what these notifications actually are, particularly that opening one runs a Copilot prompt automatically rather than opening a blank chat, since that’s a meaningfully different interaction to anything Copilot has done before.
  3. Update Copilot adoption and training materials to include this capability, and be specific that it’s proactive rather than something the user triggers.
  4. Treat this as a genuine policy review, not just a helpdesk notice. Given four separate compliance considerations from Microsoft’s own assessment, this is worth a short conversation with whoever owns mobile device and data policy in your organisation, not only whoever owns Copilot adoption.

Where this fits with your wider Copilot governance

This is a more substantial update than most we’ve covered, and it sits well alongside our work on Copilot readiness: the question isn’t whether Copilot can do this safely, it’s whether your organisation’s mobile and notification policies were written with an AI system that acts proactively in mind. Most weren’t, because most predate Copilot entirely.

If you’d like support getting ahead of this one, we can help in a few ways:

Learn more

  • Search Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 560339 on the official Microsoft 365 Roadmap site for the live rollout entry.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are Microsoft 365 Copilot’s proactive push notifications?

Notifications sent by the Copilot mobile app that summarise a user’s emails, Teams activity and files without the user asking first, covering scenarios like “Your Day at a Glance” and “Items waiting for you.” Opening one launches the Copilot app with a response already generated.

Do you have to opt in to Copilot push notifications?

No. They’re enabled by default for anyone with a Microsoft 365 Copilot licence who already has mobile notifications turned on. Users can turn them off individually from the Copilot app’s notification settings on their own device.

Can IT admins control or disable Copilot push notifications for the organisation?

No. There is no tenant-level admin control. The only available control sits with each user, on their own device, and admins have no visibility into who has notifications enabled.

Could Copilot notification content appear on a lock screen?

It can, depending on the individual device’s own notification and lock screen settings, the same as any other app notification. Since the content is an AI-generated summary of work data rather than a generic alert, this is worth factoring into mobile device and notification policy reviews.

When is this rolling out?

Public preview begins worldwide in mid-July 2026, with general availability following from mid-August and completing by mid-September 2026, associated with Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 560339.