Notifications

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Learn about the technical aspects of notification delivery on device, including notification types, priorities, and notification center management.

Notifications Documentation

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Is there a way for a device to detect when VoIP Push has been blocked?
Hello, I am developing an application using VoIP Push and CallKit. I have a question: Starting with iOS 13, I understand that under the VoIP Push policy, if reportNewIncomingCall is not called continuously, the VoIP Push may be blocked. Is there a way to determine if the device has been blocked? I am curious whether PKPushRegistry itself is unable to receive pushes or if reportNewIncomingCall returns an error when it is blocked. If push notifications are not being received, what should I do to resume receiving them? Thank you.
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732
Nov ’24
Send ImagePreview within firebase cloud messaging to iOS
Is there a way to to add a key for imageURL below that shows as image preview on the right side of a push notification or do i need to create a Notification Content Extension to make it work? `const message = { apns: { payload: { aps: { 'mutable-content': 1, alert: { title: title, body: body, image: imageURL, }, }, }, fcm_options: { image: imageURL, }, }, data: { articleId: articleId, 'media-url': imageURL, }, tokens: tokens, };` I'm getting the image through, but just if the user long presses on the push notification and then it appears below, but i want it to look like in the screenshot: Thanks
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401
Oct ’24
Sandbox APNs not working
Hello, I have the new root certificate is installed on the server (regarding "Action Required: Apple Push Notification Service Server Certificate Update"). I have switched to using sandbox environment to test if it would be working but I get error: "reason":"BadCertificateEnvironment" does it mean that the root certificate is not installed correctly or that is a different issue? What could be the reason for that? I have found that this response corresponds to "The client certificate is forthe wrong environment.", but there weren't an option to set environment on "https://identity.apple.com/pushcert/".
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336
Feb ’25
Live Activities - Missing Entitlement
I've built an app that supports live activities, but when trying to build and deploy I'm getting the error: Provisioning profile "iOS Team Provisioning Profile doesn't include the com.apple.developer.live-activity entitlement." Looking in Xcode - under signing and provisions, there is no "Live Activity" option to select. Looking in the developer portal, similarly under Certificates, Identifiers & Profiles, there is no "Live Activity" option. I've added com.apple.developer.live-activity to my entitlements file for both my widget and my main app target, and added NSSupportsLiveActivities to my info.plist files. I'm building on Xcode Version 16.0 Any ideas on how to fix this? Super confused! Thanks in advance!
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743
Dec ’24
Issue with Live Activity Update - "The device token doesn't match the specified topic"
Hi! I am encountering an issue when attempting to send a test notification to update a live activity. The request is failing with the following error: { "code": 400, "message": "bad-request", "reason": "The device token doesn't match the specified topic.", "requestUuid": "3ed3fc0c-9c57-4d67-8ae8-cbabe0579b10" } I have verified that all device tokens and app identifiers are correct, but the error persists. Could you please assist in identifying the root cause of this issue?
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543
Jan ’25
Critical alert delay
I am sending push notifications to the app with critical alerts, but there is a significant delay. If the number of target devices is 1000 or less, notifications will be received normally within a few seconds to a minute. Once the number of target devices exceeds 1000, some devices will arrive quickly (normally within a few seconds to 1 minute) and others will arrive late (3 minutes to 15 minutes, divided into hundreds of items). In severe cases, notifications to more than 80% of devices will be delayed. Example: If you send 3000 notifications at once,  1 minute: Notify 400 items  5 minutes: Notify 1000 items  10 minutes: Notify 1000 items  13 minutes: Notify 600 items *The timing of 5 minutes, 10 minutes, and 13 minutes changes every time and is not at regular intervals. We understand that according to the push notification specifications, sending several thousand messages at once is not a problem. Please let me know if there is a rule, such as sending 1000 items at a time, in order to deliver quickly and with minimal delay.
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494
Nov ’24
Wallet Pass not updating for some customers
I am looking for advice for debugging a wallet pass not updating for some customers after successfully posting an APNS notification (pass identifier as topic, no expiration, priority 10). Is there an exhaustive list of reasons for a wallet pass not updating or a guide for making sure updates happen reliably? Are there are any guarantees made as to when the pass is updated? We noticed it is either never updating or the update happens much later for some customers. Usually toggling "Automatic Updates" in Pass Details updates the pass immediately for affected customers. Can it be caused by an error in the implementation of the Wallet Passes Web Service? We generate passes on the fly as a response to /v1/passes/{passTypeIdentifier}/{serialNumber}. I noticed that we also sometimes receive HEAD requests to this endpoint despite the documentation only mentioning the GET method. I was previously returning a HTTP status code 405 (Method Not Allowed). I have now updated it to also respond with headers (Content-Type, Content-Disposition and Last-Modified) for the pass for HEAD requests, but I don't know if it makes a difference. Here is a list of issues on the customer side I was thinking of: No connection to the internet Low power mode (does it prevent or throttle updates?) What happens if there is an error? Does it keep trying or does it just fail silently? In the latter case it might make sense to keep sending APNS notifications until the pass is requested successfully. I know that you can use the PassKit framework in iOS apps to update (replace) passes. Would this be more reliable than a stand-alone Wallet pass?
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664
Oct ’24
Unable to connect to APNS sandbox endpoint
I am unable to connect to APNs sandbox push endpoint from our backend servers. It works fine when hitting the request from my local machine but it fails from the infra servers. Here are the complete curl details. Endpoint: https://api.sandbox.push.apple.com:443 CURL request and response: curl -v https://api.sandbox.push.apple.com:443 Trying 17.188.168.149:443... Connected to api.sandbox.push.apple.com (17.188.168.149) port 443 ALPN: curl offers h2,http/1.1 Cipher selection: ALL:!EXPORT:!EXPORT40:!EXPORT56:!aNULL:!LOW:!RC4:@STRENGTH TLSv1.2 (OUT), TLS handshake, Client hello (1): CAfile: /etc/pki/tls/certs/ca-bundle.crt CApath: none OpenSSL SSL_connect: SSL_ERROR_SYSCALL in connection to api.sandbox.push.apple.com:443 Closing connection curl: (35) OpenSSL SSL_connect: SSL_ERROR_SYSCALL in connection to api.sandbox.push.apple.com:443 There are no issues with Production endpoint. Can someone help? Verified all certificates. Everything worked fine until 29th July but started failing since 30th July
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125
Aug ’25
What is the expected behavior for a notification service extension if the user has not been prompted for requestAuthorization()
If an iOS application has a notification service extension which gets sent a push, but the user has not been prompted for notification authorization via requestAuthorization() then what is the expected behavior? Will the push get delivered to the NSE but the resulting notification not displayed? Or will the push not get delivered at all to the NSE?
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104
1w
Push notifications functions never triggered
I've spent over a day on this so I'm hoping someone on here has some idea as to what is going on for me. I've implemented push notifications in my app, but when I send a notification to a device, none of the receiving function are triggered. When the app is in the background, the notification arrives correctly, and when tapped it correctly launches the app - but the didReceiveRemoteNotification function is never triggered, so I'm unable to handle/react to the notification. When the app is in the foreground, neither the willLaunch or didReceive functions are triggered. I'm setting the UNUserNotificationCenterDelegate in the willFinishLaunchingWithOptions function, and when I monitor the app via the console, it shows no errors and shows willPresentNotification delivery succeeded I have updated the Background Modes to include background fetch, background processing, and remote notifications. I have also tested this on both the Xcode simulator and a physical device with the same results. I've also tested this with push notifications coming from my server, push notifications coming from the CloudKit console, and just dropping a JSON file onto the simulator. All resulted in the same behaviour. Does anyone have any idea why these functions might not be triggered??
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510
Oct ’24
Alarm.Schedule.Relative gets scheduled to next day if too close?
Hi there, Thank you for the framework 🙏 if I use Alarm.Schedule.Relative with Alarm.Schedule.Relative.Time(hour: hour, minute: minute) and Alarm.Schedule.Relative.Recurrence.never it seems like there is some (odd?) limit where alarm will get scheduled to next day if too close? For example, lets say the current time is 12:00 PM, if I schedule alarm for 12:02 PM, it will schedule it for next day, while if I do 12:05 PM it will work as expected. Is that expected? If yes, what's the behavior and is that documented anywhere? I would expect any alarm thats scheduled in the future to fire for the current day (maybe if it's only 1 minute it gets tricky). One problem is also that even if the framework says an alarm is scheduled, I don't have access to the "next alarm date"? I wish I did as otherwise I have to compute it (by "guessing" the AlarmKit calculation) if I want to do anything with that date. Honestly, sometimes I think I am just going crazy when the alarm doesn't fire, but there SEEMS to be some odd behavior around this? (of course, feel free to correct me on anything - I could be missing documentation or not understanding something)
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119
Aug ’25
iOS blocks 100% notification for app in the background
I created my app. One of its functionality is receive remote notification in the background (it receives it from Firebase Cloud Messaging via APNS) and replies with device location data. This is "boat tracking and alarm" type of app. It worked well both on my iPhone (where I use the same Apple ID as on developer's account) and on my son's iPad (different Apple ID). After the first review, when app was rejected with some remarks, background remote notifications completely stopped working on my iPhone. It looks like my iPhone put the app in permanent sleep. It never receives the background notifications. It receives them though in 2 case: when I open the app (it is no longer in background) when location is changed (it wakes app in the background). But the app should also respond when the device is stable at the position (I use both: precise and Significant Location Change. In the latter case changes are very rare). Btw, I scheduled a background task, not location, and it also never gets executed, so this workaround does not work. I describe it, so any Apple engineer does not get confused, verifying that these remote notifications reach the device. NO, they never get through when app is in the background (THIS IS THE PROBLEM), not that they are never delivered (the are, in the foreground). And the proof that it is not a problem with the app or remote notification construction is: they work on another drives (iPad) with no issues. Sometimes they are very delayed, sometimes almost instant. But usually they work. they worked the same way on my iPhone (with my developer's Apple ID) before the first rejection, and I haven't messed with messaging functionality since then. Now I am over with the last hope I had. I finally got my app release in App Store. I hoped official version would release some blockade my iOS put on my app. But unfortunately not. Official version works the same way as the test one. It works fine (receiving notifications in the background) on my son's iPad and it does not receive any background notification on my iPhone (100% block rate). Can anyone help me how can I reset my apps limits, the iOS created for my app? It seems that the rejection was a sparkle here - this is just a hint. I can provide any system logs for Apple engineers from both devices (iPhone and iPad) if you would like to check this case.
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135
Aug ’25
Apple Wallet Pass Logo Not Showing on notification on iOS 18
I'm having trouble displaying the Apple Wallet pass logo on iOS 18 when a notification occurs. It works on iOS 17 but not on iOS 18 (tested on versions 18.1 and 18.3). I ensured the Wallet pass icon sizes are correct: icon.png → 29×29 icon@ 2x.png → 58×58 icon@ 3x.png → 87×87 Questions: Has Apple changed any requirements for displaying Wallet pass logos in iOS 18? Are there new size, format, or metadata constraints?
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505
Feb ’25
Live Activity "Push to Start" is received but UI never appears (Silent Crash)
Hello everyone, I'm implementing the "Push to Start" feature for Live Activities, and I've run into an issue where the activity seems to be processed by the system but never appears on the Lock Screen or in the Dynamic Island. I suspect there's a silent crash happening in my widget extension immediately after launch, but I'm unable to capture any logs or crash reports in the Xcode debugger. Here is the flow and all the relevant data: 1. The Process My app successfully requests a pushToStartToken using Activity<EJourneyLiveActivityAttributes>.pushToStartTokenUpdates The token is sent to our server. The server uses this token to send a "start" event APNs push notification. The device console logs (from liveactivitiesd) show that the push is received and the system is "Publishing event". Expected Result: The Live Activity UI appears on the device. Actual Result: Nothing appears. The UI is completely absent. 2. Device Console Logs Here are the logs from the device console, which indicate a successful receipt of the push: pushServer default 12:08:22.716353+0200 liveactivitiesd Received push event for com.wavepointer.ejourney.staging::pushToStart pushServer default 12:08:22.716818+0200 liveactivitiesd Reduced budget for com.wavepointer.ejourney.staging::pushToStart to: 7 pushServer default 12:08:22.723458+0200 liveactivitiesd Publishing event: timestamp: 2025-07-24 08:57:19 +0000; activityIdentifier: 53C3EE9D-623C-4F38-93AE-8BB807429DAA; eventType: start(...) 3. APNs Payload This is the exact payload being sent from our server: { "aps": { "event": "start", "timestamp": 1753347375, "attributes-type": "EJourneyLiveActivityAttributes", "attributes": { "journeyId": "test123453" }, "content-state": { "distanceInMeters": 1000, "depTime": 1752745104, "arrTime": 1752748704, "depStop": "Arth, Am See", "arrStop": "Oberarth, Bifang", "depZone": "571", "arrZone": "566", "co2Save": 5.0, "co2SavePerc": 44, "companyName": "WP Innovation", "countryCode": "CH", "categoryId": 5, "subcategoryId": 3, "stationStartAssoc": "Assoc1", "stationEndAssoc": "Assoc2" } } } 4. ActivityAttributes Struct To prevent decoding errors, I have made all properties in my ContentState optional and added a custom decoder. @available(iOS 16.1, *) struct EJourneyLiveActivityAttributes: ActivityAttributes, Hashable { public struct ContentState: Codable, Hashable { var distanceInMeters: Int = 0 var depTime: Int = 1752843769 var arrTime: Int = 1752843769 var depStop: String = "" var arrStop: String = "" var depZone: String = "" var arrZone: String = "" var co2Save: Double? var co2SavePerc: Int = 0 var companyName: String = "Test" var countryCode: String = "CH" var categoryId: Int = 3 var subcategoryId: Int = 4 var stationStartAssoc: String? var stationEndAssoc: String? } var journeyId: String? } What I've Tried I have carefully checked that my Codable struct matches the JSON payload. I've made all properties optional to avoid crashes from missing keys. I have tried attaching the Xcode debugger to the widget extension process (Debug -> Attach to Process...) before sending the push, but no logs, errors, or crash reports appear in the Xcode console. The process seems to terminate before it can log anything. My question is: What could cause the widget extension to fail so early that it doesn't even produce a crash log in the attached debugger? Are there other methods to debug this kind of silent failure? Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!
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200
Jul ’25
Best way to wake app to sync data
If I have data on server that is updated periodically (e.g., daily or weekly), and I want to have that data sync'd to iOS app, what is best way? I want to make sure it will get updated when app is in foreground, background, swiped away (terminated), or following a phone restart. The two ways I'm thinking of are PushKit and User Notifications. I'm currently using User Notifications, but I am finding that sometimes the notification doesn't get processed (haven't yet determined reliable conditions for duplicating this problem). I'm mainly wondering if, given the use case (occasional updates that ideally are processed in background ASAP), this is the best approach.
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508
Oct ’24
Short spikes in timeout calling APNS
Hello, I would like to check with you on a possible APNS issue. We saw a huge spike in the number of failed requests towards APNS (both api.push.apple.com and api.development.push.apple.com). On October 31st, at 13:39 (during 1 or 2 minutes), more than 700k requests failed. Which means more than 10% of all requests made by our service to api.push.apple.com. Our service is sending notification requests for more applications, different AppIds, in high amounts. Even more concerning is the fact that it happens more or less regularly now. 2-3 times a week. Still, just for short time, but I would like to check with APNS, whether it is something you know about. Checking graphs in CloudKit did not help me much. They don't allow good enough granularity. Not more precise than 1 day. Please, let me know if you are aware of some very short transient issues in APNS. Happening more or less regularly, with noticeable impact.
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615
Nov ’24
About APNS certificate replacement
I received an email from Apple saying that I needed to replace the APNS certificate. I am inquiring because I am curious about who has the relevant authority and who actually makes the changes. Could you please provide specific guidance on this? Hello, We’re reaching out with a final reminder that the Certification Authority (CA) for Apple Push Notification service (APNs) is changing. APNs updated the server certificates in sandbox on January 21, 2025. APNs production server certificates will be updated on February 24, 2025. To continue using APNs without interruption, you’ll need to update your application’s Trust Store to include the new server certificate: SHA-2 Root: USERTrust RSA Certification Authority certificate. To ensure a smooth transition and avoid push notification delivery failures, please make sure that both old and new server certificates are included in the Trust Store before the cut-off date for each of your application servers that connect to sandbox and production. At this time, you don’t need to update the APNs SSL provider certificates issued to you by Apple. If you have any questions, please contact us. The Apple Developer Relations Team
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694
Feb ’25
APNs Returning 200 OK for Uninstalled Apps
We're experiencing an issue with Apple Push Notification service where APNs continues to return 200 OK responses for device tokens belonging to uninstalled applications. Issue Details: When sending push notifications to device tokens, APNs returns 200 OK responses even for devices where our app was uninstalled more than a month ago Thanks in advanced for support
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110
Jul ’25
Live Activity update push token
For devices running iOS 18 and iPadOS 18 or later, you can add input-push-token: 1 to your payload to start a Live Activity and receive a new push token. After you receive a new push token, you can use it to send updates to a Live Activity. I read from https://developer.apple.com/documentation/ActivityKit/starting-and-updating-live-activities-with-activitykit-push-notifications#Start-new-Live-Activities-with-ActivityKit-push-notifications that I can start a live activity from CUSTOM SERVER by the start token I get from MyApp.Does that paragraph means my CUSTOM SERVER can receive a new token from aps? If not, how can update the live activity started by Push-Notification when MyApp doesn't alive? And what "input-push-token: 1 " can do, when I put it in the payloads?
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1k
Dec ’24