If there is a Notification Service Extension which has the com.apple.developer.usernotifications.filtering entitlement, then does/how having that entitlement affect the preconditions for the NSE to be delivered a push?
Specifically, if the app has not prompted for requestAuthorization() is it expected that the push will be delivered to the NSE or not?
Thank you
Notifications
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Dear Apple Developer Support,
I am currently developing an iOS application that uses push notifications with custom .caf audio and a Notification Service Extension.
I have implemented the extension to download and play a dynamic sound file from a remote sound_url. It works well when the app is in the foreground or background.
However, when the app is force-closed (swiped up from multitasking), the Notification Service Extension does not seem to run. As a result, the custom sound is not downloaded or played.
I would like to confirm:
Is it possible to trigger the Notification Service Extension when the app is killed?
If not, what is the correct way to play a custom .caf sound when the app is terminated? Should I preload and save the .caf file in App Group storage and reference it by name in the sound field?
Are there any best practices or limitations regarding push notification customization when the app is killed?
I appreciate your help in clarifying this issue. Thank you very much!
Best regards,
Phan Van Tung
Hi,
We have a simple calendar reminder app that uses UNNotificationRequest to schedule local notifications for user events.
I’m wondering whether UNNotificationRequest has a system-imposed limit of 64 upcoming scheduled notifications, similar to the deprecated UILocalNotification.
We’re asking because one of our users is not receiving recently scheduled reminders.
Our current workflow is:
We schedule notifications on app launch and when the app is about to quit.
Before scheduling, we call removeAllPendingNotificationRequests().
We then fetch the 64 nearest upcoming events and schedule them using
UNUserNotificationCenter.current().add(...).
This approach works fine during our testing, but we’re unsure what might be causing the issue for some users.
Any insights would be appreciated. Thanks!
Notification coordination between iOS and watchOS is not working properly
watchOS and iOS try to coordinate between phone and watch notifications.
The concept here is that if there is a main app and a companion app, they could both be sending a notification, then the notification would alert on both, which is a deviation from how notification mirroring is handled if there is an iOS app but no watch app.
The watch waits for the iOS notification to fire so they can determine if this is the same notification that needs to be deduped, displayed on one device but not the other, or separate notifications to be displayed both.
If there is no notification on the phone, the watch will timeout after 13 seconds and alert anyway.
If you have an iOS companion app, the best solution to this is to send the same notification on both devices simultaneously, and ensuring the UNNotificationRequest.identifier matches on both notifications. This will let the systems determine how to handle the notification correctly and quickly, and the notification will alert right away.
https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/765669
According to the above article, "when a notification arrives on watchOS alone first, it coordinates with iOS," but in reality, it doesn't work properly.
Detailed process of this phenomenon
watchOS receives a notification.
On watchOS, the notification is not immediately shown to the user.
iOS receives a notification with the same UNNotificationRequest.identifier as in (1).
The notification in (3) does not appear on either iOS or watchOS. However, the notification from (3) does appear in iOS Notification Center.
Thirteen seconds after watchOS received the notification, the notification from (1) is shown to the user on watchOS.
In the end, the iOS and watchOS notifications are not consolidated and each remains in its respective notification center.
Up to (3) there are no issues. Starting with (4), both iOS and watchOS exhibit a lot of odd behavior.
This phenomenon occurs with both local notifications and push notifications.
When iOS receives the notification first, there is no problem. The notification for watch received later is processed appropriately, and the watchOS notification is not additionally displayed to the user.
Expected proper process
Same as above.
Same as above.
Same as above.
The notification in (1) is integrated into the notification in (3).
The notification in (3) is alerted to the user immediately.
2 sample projects to reproduce
Only the main code is attached.
Sample project1: local notifications
Swift code for local notification app (iOS, watchOS) - App.swift.txt
Sample project2: push notifications
This sample project is implemented using Firebase Functions and Firebase Cloud Messaging.
Swift code push notification app (iOS, watchOS) - App.swift.txt
Server side JavaScript code for FirebaseFunction - index.js.txt
Tested devices and OS
This phenomenon occurred in both of the following patterns.
Pattern 1
Xcode 26.0
iPhone 16 (iOS 26.0)
Apple Watch series 10 (watchOS 26.0)
Pattern 2
Xcode 16.4
iPhone 11 (iOS 18.6)
Apple Watch SE 2nd gen (watchOS 11.6)
Question
Is this phenomenon a bug?
Or is my understanding or implementation incorrect?
Feedback Assistant number
FB20339772
If a notification: ONE_TIME_CHARGE is used to ship the IAP content, it involves a point where the client might not finish the transaction, yet the item is shipped. Will an unfinished purchase affect refunds?
Topic:
App & System Services
SubTopic:
Notifications
Hi,
there is a issue that iOS background NFC scanning will only provide a notification result, It need user click to enter my APP, can I have any method to enter my APP directly without user action ?
There is one xpc server and two xpc clients (clientA and clientB). When clientB sends a message to the xpc server, xpc server fills a value for dummyString in it's memory and I want clientA to know that dummyString got updated and also the new value for this dummyString. The updation of dummyString is not something that happens often.
Two options we tried:
Have a timer for 5 seconds in clientA and keep polling and request for the value of this dummyString.
Setup a darwin notification in server that gets posted whenever dummyString is being updated. clientA receives requests for dummyString value only when it observes a notification being posted.
Which of these two approaches causes the least delay for clientA to know the updated value of dummyString?
When performing the P12 certificate sending test, there was an error stating that authentication failed due to the remote party closing the transport stream. May I ask how to solve this?
I invoked the getNotificationSettingsWithCompletionHandler method of UNUserNotificationCenter on multiple test devices. After dismissing the notification permission request dialog (without explicit denial), the returned UNNotificationSettings object showed inconsistent authorizationStatus values across OS versions:
**iOS 18: Returns UNAuthorizationStatusNotDetermined
iOS 14.2:** Returns UNAuthorizationStatusDenied
Where can I find official Apple documentation explaining this behavioral discrepancy between system versions?
Currently working on a dating app which needs voip for audio and video calls for ios. the voip notifications only comes to the app in active and inactive mode but doesnt wake the device in background or terminated mode. After debugging i noticed that com.apple.developer.voip entitlement wasnt included which i later added, trying to create a build i get the eas error that the entitlement wasnt added to the identifier capabilities. My issue now is that i can't seem to find the voip capability to check in the identifiers capabilities list for the bundle id.d
I have a “1” above the setting app on my iPhone. However when I open settings there is no notification that shows up. I have tried force restarting and done the beta updates as they release however nothing works to got rid of it. What can I do?
Topic:
App & System Services
SubTopic:
Notifications
iOS app crashes on launch after updating and adding push notifications, but no crash logs are received; however, it works fine after restart. What could be the reason?
launch failed, RBSProcessExitContext voluntary
I'm observing that when a silent push notification is sent to our app, is is started up in the background for 30 seconds before being suspended until the app is launched by the user. This causes data to persist from the silent push notification to the user app launch.
I couldn't find documentation on this behavior for silent push notifications, and was wondering if it's possible to have the app terminate after handling the silent push notification. Is there documentation on the general flow of silent push notifications as well?
I'm able to handle the edge cases if the app has to be suspended until user launch, but just want to confirm that this is the expected behavior before I go about handling it this way.
We are trying to figure out a strange issue.
Our app has not changed for at least 10 months but my devices and the QA tester device have all stopped receiving push/call notifications for twilio voip
The twilio credential and apple voip services certificate are in date and valid
It is pointing to the correct bundle id and topic (not changed configuration for years)
token passed in to TwilioVoiceSDK.register() is retrieved from PKPushRegistry as per guide
Running locally the Twilio Voice SDK successfully registers and retrieves APNs token
What is interesting is if I log in with exactly the same client account on an iOS 18.5 device (and an older iPad) call notifications work perfectly (I have made sure all focus modes/dnd are off and notification settings are identical)
The only changes myself and QA have made recently is minor iOS 18 version updates - 18.6.2 and 18.7.1
These now receive Invalid device token from APNs when Twilio attempts to create a call/voip notification for the user identity
Our devices sometimes switch environments test/prod so I installed the app cleanly on a borrowed 18.6.2 device and got the exact same issue
We have tested on these devices most of the year with no issues.
I have been in touch with twilio support and added code to explicitly unregister and re register on an affected device to clear any bindings but it didn't help.
Have apple made any changes in PushKit or token behaviour for later versions of iOS 18?
Thanks
We are facing an issue: push notifications are not being received. We are using the Marketing Cloud SDK for push notifications.
On install, the app correctly registers for push notifications. We pass the required information to Marketing Cloud — for example, contact key, token, etc. Marketing Cloud also confirms that the configuration is set up, and we have tried sending push notifications with proper delivery settings.
The issue is that after some time, the device gets automatically opted out in the Marketing Cloud portal. When we consulted their team, they said this is caused by the “DeviceTokenNotForTopic” error received from APNs. I have verified the certificates and bundle ID from my end — everything looks correct.
Device: iPhone 15, iPhone 17
iOS: 18.7.2, 26.1
Hi, We recently updated our app icon, but the push notification icon has not been updated on some devices. It still shows the old icon on: • iPhone 16 Pro — iOS 26 • iPhone 14 — iOS 26 • iPad Pro 11” (M4) — iOS 18.6.2 • iPhone 16 Plus — iOS 18.5
After restarting these devices, the push notification icon is refreshed and displays the new version correctly.
Could you advise how we can ensure the push notification icon updates properly on all affected devices without requiring users to restart?
Thank you.
We would like to better understand the discrepancy between a Push To Start and the subsequent Updates where I see a number of recipients drop greatly.
Our assumption is that this is a result of the end user not clicking the "Allow" prompt when a push to start widget is shown on the screen for the first time, but we currently do not have a way to listen to the user's choice when prompted.
Is there any way of tapping into this, to determine if this is in fact where the variance is coming from, or if there is actually just a problem with the request to retrieve the update token from our end?
Hi all,
I’m running into an issue with provisioning profiles not including the com.apple.developer.push-notifications entitlement — even though everything seems to be configured correctly.
Here's what I’ve done:
Checked the App ID has Push Notifications enabled.
I’ve clicked “Configure” and created a Production APNs certificate under the App ID.
I’ve regenerated the provisioning profiles (Ad Hoc and App Store).
I can see within the profiles within App Store Connect that the push notifications capability is listed
I’ve downloaded and decoded the profiles using:
security cms -D -i profile.mobileprovision > decoded.plist
But com.apple.developer.push-notifications is still missing under the <key>Entitlements</key> block.
This is causing issues because:
When I submit the build to eas I receive this error from XCode:
- Provisioning profile "*** Adhoc" doesn't include the com.apple.developer.push-notifications entitlement. Profile qualification is using entitlement definitions that may be out of date. Connect to network to update. (in target '***' from project '***')
Refer to "Xcode Logs" below for additional, more detailed logs.
To isolate the issue further I:
Created a completely new App ID, enabling Push Notifications from the start.
Created new APNs certificate.
Generated new provisioning profiles with a valid distribution certificate.
Still no push entitlement embedded in the profile.
Question:
Has anyone else encountered this issue where Push Notifications are enabled and configured, but the entitlement still fails to embed in the profile?
Thanks in advance.
I'm trying to provide custom localized descriptions for the iOS notification permission popup in my app, which supports multiple locales. To achieve this, I'm using InfoPlist.strings files per locale with the following keys:
NSUserNotificationsUsageDescription
NSUserTrackingUsageDescription
The issue I'm facing is that NSUserTrackingUsageDescription is working correctly across all tested locales, but NSUserNotificationsUsageDescription only works for some locales.
Locales tested:
Working: ja, tr, fr-CA
Not working: fr-BE, nl-BE
In each case, the correct localized NSUserTrackingUsageDescription appears, but the NSUserNotificationsUsageDescription falls back to the default or does not appear as expected in fr-BE and nl-BE.
I'm using Xcode 16 and testing on both iOS 18 simulator and physical devices, and the issue is consistent across both.
Any insights on whether this is a known issue in iOS or if there are additional steps needed for NSUserNotificationsUsageDescription to localize properly would be greatly appreciated.
Hey there,
i implemented live activity in my app and iam trying to start the live activity from push notification, updates works fine even when the app is in background but starting the activity creating issue mostly on background and kill mode when i check the delivery of live activity on cloudkit console it says stored for device power considerations.
anyone having the same issue ?