Notifications for native apps was released in 2009. It's now 2021 and we still have no indication when Web App Notifications are being developer let alone released. Service Workers and Notifications are already built and working in desktop safari. Given that the majority of apps require some sort of notification to be useful, is the safari team currently developing this feature and what is the planned release date?
It would be really nice to get a concrete response on this before the end of WWDC2021 with as much details as is possible.
We're approaching the end of WWDC and still no one has replied to this. There are supposed to be 1000 developers available to answer questions, yet no one has answered this. As developers we wait every year for WWDC in the hope that Apple will release some of these core features.
After 11 years of waiting for notifications, countless requests and the radio-silence we receive when we directly raise the topic, i'm wondering is the Safari team prohibited from discussing iOS notifications?
Through comprehensive searches all I can find is developers begging for the feature, there seems to be no detailed discussions regarding iOS notification on when or how or even if.
WWDC's last day is tomorrow, please respond.
If you're quick you can see if you can request a Safari/WebKit lab for tomorrow before the window closes today. Securing one of those is the only guaranteed way to talk to an engineer. The forum has no such guarantees, despite regular activity by Apple engineers, especially during WWDC. That said, if it's not mentioned in the sessions, then you generally won't be able to extract information about future plans.
Most stuff that they work on is listed on the webkit site here. Other than that you can file your enhancement request in the Feedback Assistant app or try your luck with the webkit bug tracker.
As far as I know there are no plans to introduce web notifications on iOS.
If you're quick you can see if you can request a Safari/WebKit lab for tomorrow before the window closes today.
I had considered that, but I think it's important the right person with some sort of decision making capability or influence responds. I've posted a link to this thread in the safari/webkit developer slack channel and I emailed the entire Safari/webkit mailing list so I'm sure that they've at least read this post and the more general one at
https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/681748.
As far as I know there are no plans to introduce web notifications on iOS.
This is the primary reason for the growing frustration amongst web-developers. In some cases it's obvious why Apple doesn't allow specific things to benefit users privacy, but in this specific case we can't see any reason allowing notifications would degrade the user experience if they were built properly and users were given the exact same controls they get over native apps.
The lack of response (i.e. we don't want too because of xyz) leads me to think it's a pure business decision.
Perhaps one of the most blatent web technology omissions by Apple I know. This is why I have moved away from Apple products despite their other appealing products. Do they not think that all app devs know that their only doing this to protect their App Store. No other reason. If they are so amazing, can't their products stand on their own without these little school yard games?