Push notifications

About push notifications

Push notifications are banner alerts that can contain many other kinds of data such as images, sounds, badge updates, buttons, and more. App push notifications target mobile devices, while web push notifications target users’ web browsers.

Mobile app push notifications help you:

• Alert users when they are not in the app
• Pass extra data to users for marketing/segmentation use
• Keep users engaged with your app

Use cases:

• Breaking news
• Score updates
• Transaction confirmation
• Social interactions
• New content available

You can combine mobile app push notification with an In-App MessageA message that appears inside of your app. You can send in-app messages to your entire app audience, not just users who have opted-in to push notifications. The standard format, as opposed to In-App Automation, is a banner that slides downward or upward from the top or bottom of a device screen. and/or Message CenterA place in your app where you can display persistent rich messages, including HTML, video, etc. Similar to email, Message Center represents both the medium (the in-app inbox) and the message type (the messages you send to the inbox). message. When combining a push notification and Message Center, Airship sends the Message Center message to both opted-in and opted-out devices.

Reach users on the web without developing an app. Any user with access to a web browser can receive your notifications. If you do have an app, however, you can use web as an additional channel to engage your audience.

Airship supports web push notifications on:

• Desktop: Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Microsoft Edge, Opera, and Safari (v16 and above)
• Android Mobile: Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Opera
• iOS and iPadOS Mobile: Safari (iOS and iPadOS 16.4 and above, as a standalone web app)

Silent push notifications

A silent push notification is a message that wakes a mobile app for processing without appearing on the device or producing sound or vibration. Silent push notifications are useful for performing background tasks such as sending custom keys, updating the app’s badge icon, fetching remote content, and enabling new features.

For more information, see Silent Notifications for iOS and Silent Notifications for Android.

You can send silent push notifications using Sequences and the Message and Automation composers. You cannot combine a silent push notification with any other message type.

Appearance and behavior

App and web push notifications are displayed upon receipt and require text content and support adding buttons, a title, and media. Details and differences are described for each in the next sections.

App push notifications

Push notifications are in banner format and can appear on any screen on a device. They are not PersistentMessage content that remains available even if the alerts for the message are dismissed. For example, Message Center, email, and SMS content can be viewed in the app’s Message Center, email inbox, or the device’s native SMS client until the message is deleted by its recipient. Non-persistent message types become unavailable when users dismiss them. A message’s linked content, e.g., a web link, deep link, an Apple News story, remains available as determined by the source host..

Every push notification requires text, and you can also add optional features:

• Buttons — You can add one or two buttons.

• Title — This is a heading that appears above the notification text in:

  • iOS Notification Center
  • Apple Watch Looks
  • Android and Fire OS Notification Area/Drawer

• Media — See Push notifications in Media guidelines.

• Summary — This is supplemental text displayed with the notification. The position varies per platform.

Web push notifications

A web push notification appears as a toast, sliding into the top right or bottom left corner of your audience’s web browser (depending on the browser). Depending on the operating system, they may also be delivered to the OS Notification Center. For example, on macOS all web notifications are visible from within the Notification Center, regardless of which browser they come from.

They are displayed upon receipt as long as the browser is open. Safari web notifications are handled by macOS, so they may also be handled by Notification Center preferences.

On a mobile device, web push notifications appear and behave similarly to a mobile push notification.

Every web push notification requires text, and you can also add optional features:

• Buttons — You can add one or two buttons.

• Title — This heading appears above the notification text in:

  • iOS Notification Center
  • Android and Fire OS Notification Area/Drawer

  You define a default title for all of your project’s web messages when configuring the web channel for your project, and you can override the title per message.

• Media — Add an image that will appear in web messages in Chrome and Opera browsers on Windows and Android platforms.

• Icon — This image is included in all web messages. You define a default icon for all of your project’s web messages when configuring the web channel for your project, and you can override the icon per message.

Getting started with push notifications

Follow these steps to start using mobile app push notifications with Airship:

• Configure mobile channels in your project settings See Configuring Mobile Channels in the Getting Started guide.
• Integrate the Mobile SDK with your app See SDK setup for mobile apps in our developer documentation.

Follow these steps to start using web push notifications with Airship:

• Configure the Web channel in your project settings.
• Integrate the Web SDK with your website.

  See Getting Started for the Web SDK in our developer documentation.

Once your project is set up, you can start creating mobile app push notification content and Web push notification content.