No "Unregistered" Error Returned for Background Notifications

Question

Created Jul ’25

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Hi team,

We've observed that for all background notifications (where content-available set to true, https://developer.apple.com/documentation/usernotifications/pushing-background-updates-to-your-app#Create-a-background-notification), we never received any response with error string "Unregistered". This differs from non-background pushes, where expired tokens are regularly cleared.

Is this the expected behavior (i.e., background notifications will not return an "Unregistered" error), or could this indicate an issue on our side?

Thanks in advance for any clarification.

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Answer 1

Engineer OP

Apple

Jul ’25

The Unregistered (410) status is sent back on a best-effort basis, and on a fuzzy logic that may delay the status update randomly.

Also, for a token to go into the Unregistered state, the device has to receive a push after the token is no longer valid on the device (either the app has been removed, or unregisterForRemoteNotifications() is called). One reason you are not seeing any (or as many) Unregistered status for background notifications could be that they are heavily throttled, and it could be that they are dropped before the point the status would be updated.

In summary, Unregistered should be working for background notifications as well, but the reason you are not seeing could be due to how they are handled, and not necessarily due to an issue on your side.

Argun Tekant /  DTS Engineer / Core Technologies

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