How to Get TGTG Alerts (And Why They Usually Aren't Enough)

TL;DR: TGTG alerts fire when a bag is listed, but delivery latency plus the time it takes to open the app means you're often too late. In busy cities, bags are gone in under 30 seconds. The fix isn't a faster alert — it's not needing to act on one at all.

How TGTG's Built-In Alerts Work

Too Good To Go has push notifications built into the app. When a store you've saved lists a new surprise bag, TGTG sends you a push alert. To make sure they're on: open the TGTG app, go to Settings → Notifications, and enable push notifications for saved stores. You can also set a "favorite" status on specific stores to prioritize them.

In theory, this is exactly what you'd want from TGTG alerts — a ping the moment something becomes available, so you can jump in and grab it.

In practice, it rarely works out that way.

Why TGTG Alerts Fail in Competitive Markets

Here's the sequence of events after a bag goes live:

1. TGTG's servers list the bag
2. A push notification is generated and queued
3. Your phone receives it (10–60 seconds of delivery latency, depending on your carrier, device state, and background app restrictions)
4. You see the notification, unlock your phone, and open the app
5. You navigate to the store and tap Reserve

At a quiet store in a small town, this might work fine. At Whole Foods in Midtown Manhattan, a Trader Joe's in San Francisco, or any high-demand location in a major city, that window is 5 to 30 seconds from the moment the bag is listed to sold out.

The math behind why bags sell out so fast explains this in detail — but the short version is that many people are watching the same stores simultaneously, and the TGTG app prioritizes whoever sends the reserve request first.

Push notification delivery alone can add 10–60 seconds of lag. That's before you've even touched your phone. TGTG alerts, even when working correctly, often fire after the window has already closed.

Third-Party TGTG Alert Tools

There's a small ecosystem of third-party tools that try to close this gap by monitoring TGTG more frequently than the native app and alerting you faster. Some use polling intervals as short as a few seconds. Here's a comparison of the main ones.

The honest assessment: they're faster than the native TGTG alerts, sometimes meaningfully so. If you're in a lower-competition area or monitoring stores that list bags at predictable times, a faster alert tool can help.

But faster alerts don't solve the core problem. You still have to be at your phone, ready to act, at the exact moment the bag goes live — every single time, for every store you care about. Most people can't sustain that.

Why Alerts Aren't the Right Model

TGTG alerts are built around an assumption: that you're available to act instantly, any time of day, for any store you follow.

That's not how people actually live. You might be in a meeting when your favorite bakery lists its bag. Asleep when a new batch drops at 7am. Driving. On a call. Somewhere without signal.

The alert fires. You miss it. The bag is gone. This is the experience that most TGTG users describe — not a broken app, just a model that requires you to be perpetually on-call.

A faster alert doesn't fix this. Even a 1-second alert still requires you to be staring at your phone when it arrives.

Auto-Purchase vs TGTG Alerts

BagRescue takes a different approach. Instead of alerting you and waiting for you to act, it monitors your saved stores continuously and reserves the bag automatically the moment one becomes available.

You don't need to see a notification and react. The reservation happens on your behalf, in the background, faster than any push alert could reach you. Once the bag is secured, you get a confirmation notification — but by that point, the work is already done.

This is a meaningful difference from alert-based tools. A full comparison of alert tools vs BagRescue breaks it down further, but the key distinction is: alerts tell you something happened and ask you to act. BagRescue acts first and tells you afterward.

For competitive stores, that difference decides whether you get the bag or not.

Setting Up BagRescue Instead of Alerts

If you're tired of missing bags despite having TGTG alerts enabled, the setup takes about two minutes:

1. Create an account at bagrescue.com/register
2. Link your TGTG account — BagRescue guides you through this; it uses your existing TGTG credentials
3. Add the stores you want to monitor and enable auto-purchase

That's it. BagRescue runs in the cloud, so it works even when your phone is off, your battery is dead, or you're nowhere near it.

BagRescue Pro is $9.99/month and covers unlimited stores with continuous monitoring. Trying it is low-commitment: just $1.99 to start monitoring, and you don't pay the $9.99/month until BagRescue lands your first bag — cancel anytime. See the pricing. Is Too Good To Go worth it? — that's worth reading if you're newer to the app and still building your store list.

For people who've been burned by missing bags even with notifications on, BagRescue is the cleaner solution: stop waiting for a faster alert and remove the manual step entirely.

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FAQ

Does TGTG have alerts? Yes. The TGTG app sends push notifications when a saved store lists a new bag. Enable them under Settings → Notifications. They work, but delivery latency means you often see them after the bag is already gone in competitive areas.

Why do I keep missing bags even with notifications on? Push notifications have 10–60 seconds of delivery latency. In high-demand areas, bags can sell out in under 30 seconds of being listed. By the time you see the alert, open the app, and tap Reserve, someone else has already taken it.

What's the fastest TGTG alert? Third-party monitoring tools poll more frequently than the native app and can alert in a few seconds rather than a minute. But even the fastest TGTG alert still requires you to be at your phone and ready to act instantly. In truly competitive markets, that's still not fast enough.

Is BagRescue just an alert tool? No. BagRescue doesn't wait for you to act on an alert — it reserves the bag automatically. You get a notification after the reservation is already made. That's the difference between being notified and actually getting the bag.

Does BagRescue work while my phone is off? Yes. BagRescue runs on cloud servers, not your device. It monitors and purchases regardless of your phone's state, battery level, or whether you're online.