Can I send Push Notifications?

Push notifications are a powerful tool to re-engage PWA users who do not have the app open and to alert them to important events and updates. 

It depends on a device’s notification settings, but the typical operation is for a push notification to vibrate the user’s device and display a message on their lock screen.

Currently, Android devices support push notifications on PWAs and iOS devices do not. There is much speculation that Apple will soon begin supporting PWA push notifications and this platform will support iOS push notifications when they do.

Subscription

Users must explicitly subscribe in order to receive push messages. Native apps often get one to subscribe upon install and then make it hard to unsubscribe. 

Instead, we opted to add a notification icon to the app’s navigation bar to make it easy to see the most recent message and easy to pause and resume notifications. With this user-friendly approach, if your notifications are of value, then users will subscribe. 

When a user taps the bell icon they will see the most recent notification and a convenient switch to pause or resume notifications. iOS users can also see the most recent notification, but they do not have the option to subscribe.

When a user receives and taps a push notification, it launches the app.

Sending Notifications

An app administrator creates a notification by accessing the “Push” tab of an app. 

From the “Notification Center”, tap “New Message”, type the message and then choose to send it immediately or at a scheduled time in the future. Scheduled notifications may be edited up until the time they are sent.

Each sent message will show how many users were subscribed, how many tapped the message, and the “CTR” (i.e. click-through rate) for the notification.