As admin, enable "Mobile services": Plugins ► Web Services ► Mobile Create a Token for one user: Click on Site administration ► Plugins ► Web services ► Manage tokens With this user configure your notification preferences (only notifications, not message) You can optionaly as admin force some message settings via /message/defaultoutputs.php Next, you can do a CURL REST call simulating a WS client with the user. You need to replace the wstoken and the URL of your moodle instance curl 'http://localhost/m/stable_master/webservice/rest/server.php?moodlewsrestformat=json' --data 'userid=0&wsfunction=core_message_get_user_notification_preferences&wstoken=ffbe3a3002f235bf9d01fd9369e10b66' | python -m "json.tool" Check that you see only the processors enabled For each component and notification, check that the configuration for the processor is correct (online and offline) If you forced some notification settings, check that the locked field is correctly returned as true