Can this be done without having the notification appear and the end of the interval timing, a "silent" notification?

I didnt want to have the local notification that appears at the top of the screen, then disappears.

So basically, the local notification must/will always appear and you cannot use it to trigger a background task to inform a user without visually showing the notification itself. You must always use the UNMutableNotificationContent when wanting to use the UNNotificationRequest?