Systems and approaches are provided for presenting incoming notifications to a computing device based on a determined context of the computing device. Various sensors of the device can be used to determine the context of the device with respect to a user, the state of the device itself, or the context of the device with respect to the environment in which the device is situated. The user can then be informed of received notifications in a manner likely to get the user's attention while not being overly obtrusive to the user or others within the vicinity of the user.