The system calendar when showing a calendar event shows a relative timestamp on the notification versus all other apps which have a timestamp of when the notification was sent.
Is there a way to set the timestamp to be relative? I am currently working on a calendar app and we should be able to use the same system that apple uses for its own calendar.
Post about this on stack overflow from someone else a few years ago
Notifications
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Could anyone play a sound from the Library/Sounds directory using alarmkit? Same file can play in app bundle, but not available in Library/Sounds directory. Is this by design?
Topic:
App & System Services
SubTopic:
Notifications
We are currently developing a WebAPI service that uses APNs (HTTP/2) to send push notifications to iOS devices.
(Using PushSharp's HTTP/2 support)
The WebAPI service is running on IIS using .net framework 4.8 and c#.
The connection to APNs is always maintained, and the connection is checked every 30 minutes using a dummy token Ping.
KeepAlivePeriod = 30 minutes and KeepAliveRetryPeriod = 10 seconds have also been set.
However, the following issues are occurring.
Although the Ping sent immediately before was successful, a TimeoutException occurs in the notification request sent a few minutes later.
There is no explicit disconnection notification from APNs, and the connection appears to be silently disconnected.
Once a TimeoutException occurs, it occurs frequently afterwards.
Below is an excerpt from the log.
Apple Notification Failed for some unknown reason 1-1: One or more errors occurred.
Apple Notification Failed for some unknown reason 1-2:System.TimeoutException: The operation timed out.
In light of this issue, I would like to be advised on the following two points.
Are there any official specifications regarding the lifecycle and expiration date of APNs HTTP/2 connections?
Even if pings are sent periodically, is there a timeout or other setting that disables the connection on the APNs side?
What are the conditions that would cause APNs to silently terminate a connection?
For example, could this be due to inactivity, TLS restrictions, network maintenance, etc.?
If you have any official documentation or technical guidelines to improve the reliability of this system, we would appreciate it if you could share them with us.
Thank you in advance.
I have used the Push Notifications Console and verify that the test notification reaches my device (it says "not necessarily the app"). However, GameCenter notifications are not reaching the app. When one device passes the turn, the turn is successfully passed as seen in the Matchmaker VC. However, the app does not get the turn pass notification whether or not it is running. No banner appears if the app is not running (but it does when using the Push Notifications Console).
Please advise.
Topic:
App & System Services
SubTopic:
Notifications
The iOS documentation shows notification actions buttons with the text center aligned: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/usernotifications/declaring-your-actionable-notification-types
But there's no apparent way for an app to control this. The buttons are controlled and rendered by the system and the text is always left aligned.
Is there some way to get the text center aligned?
Hi team,
We've observed that for all background notifications (where content-available set to true, https://developer.apple.com/documentation/usernotifications/pushing-background-updates-to-your-app#Create-a-background-notification),
we never received any response with error string "Unregistered". This
differs from non-background pushes, where expired tokens are regularly
cleared.
Is this the expected behavior (i.e.,
background notifications will not return an "Unregistered" error), or could this indicate an issue on our side?
Thanks in advance for any clarification.
Here are some questions we received and answers:
Q1: Is there a limit to the number of alarms that can be scheduled using AlarmKit?
There is no set number as a limit, but this does not mean you can schedule a limitless number of alarms. Depending on device state, available resources, etc., the device may impose a limit, and restrict an app trying to schedule too many alarms simultaneously.
When you hit a limit and not able to schedule more alarms, you will receive the maximumLimitReached error.
Q2: Will the scheduled alarms persist after system or app events that may terminate an app, for example, a reboot, force quit, or app crash?
Yes, all alarms are expected to persist regardless of app or device state changes, once they are successfully scheduled.
Q3: Will alarms work if scheduled by an app that is hidden, or requires a passcode or Touch ID/Face ID to launch?
Hidden or passcode required apps do not work with AlarmKit. Currently, any scheduled alarms by such apps will silently fail.
Q4: When an alarm is dismissed (either by swiping or pressing the power button), can an app detect this action and execute code in response? What about force closed apps?
When an alarm is dismissed, the stopIntent set in the AlarmConfiguration is called.
Any code in the perform method of this AppIntent would execute.
Q5: Is there a focus mode that AlarmKit cannot break through?
No. AlarmKit alarms can break through all focus modes.
Q6: What is the expected behavior when alarms from multiple apps overlap? Which one gets priority?
Which alarm would get activated when multiple alarms are scheduled for the same time is non-deterministic. There is no way to guarantee which app or which alarm will "win".
Q7: What do pressing the physical buttons do when an AlarmKit alarm is active?
Any physical button that causes a reaction from AlarmKit will stop the currently alerting alarm.
Q8: If there are multiple alarms active at one time, which ones do physical buttons interact with?
Pressing a physical button will dismiss all currently alerting alarms
Argun Tekant /
DTS Engineer /
Core Technologies
Change History:
2025-08-15: First posted
Topic:
App & System Services
SubTopic:
Notifications
Hello, I'm using 'App Store Server Notifications V2'.
I have a question about 'CONSUMPTION_REQUEST' notification in 'notificationType'.
I was wondering if there would be any impact on refunds if I received this notification and didn't respond. (Always refund etc..)
Topic:
App & System Services
SubTopic:
Notifications
Tags:
App Store
In-App Purchase
App Store Server Notifications
We have a question regarding iOS app configuration and the Remote notifications background mode.
During our testing, we observed:
*When enabling or disabling Signing & Capabilities > Background Modes > Remote notifications, the change does not take effect on devices that already have the app installed.
*The app continues to behave according to the old configuration.
*Only after uninstalling the app and reinstalling it from the App Store do the new settings take effect (for example, whether the app can be woken up by silent push).
*We also tested updating the app with a new version number (App Store upgrade flow), but the new settings still did not apply.
Our questions are:
1.Is there any way to make iOS re-read the updated Signing & Capabilities (Background Modes) settings without requiring a full uninstall/reinstall?
2.Is it expected behavior that even an App Store upgrade with a new version number will not apply these changes?
thanks!
Topic:
App & System Services
SubTopic:
Notifications
When the app kills the process. Received APNs push message. Push messages carry voice related information. At the same time as receiving the push, obtain the voice playback of this voice message. How to achieve it?
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
Is there any information for developer about notification forwarding which is published in iOS 26.3? how to use it ?
I'm sending local push notifications and want to show specific content based on the id of any notification the user opens. I'm able to do this with no issues when the app is already running in the background using the code below.
final class AppDelegate: NSObject, UIApplicationDelegate, UNUserNotificationCenterDelegate {
let container = AppContainer()
func application(_ application: UIApplication, didFinishLaunchingWithOptions launchOptions: [UIApplication.LaunchOptionsKey: Any]? = nil) -> Bool {
let center = UNUserNotificationCenter.current()
center.delegate = self
return true
}
func userNotificationCenter(_ center: UNUserNotificationCenter, didReceive response: UNNotificationResponse, withCompletionHandler completionHandler: () -> Void) {
container.notifications.handleResponse(response)
completionHandler()
}
}
However, the delegate never fires if the app was terminated before the user taps the notification. I'm looking for a way to fix this without switching my app lifecycle to UIKit.
This is a SwiftUI lifecycle app using UIApplicationDelegateAdaptor.
@main
struct MyApp: App {
@UIApplicationDelegateAdaptor(AppDelegate.self) var appDelegate
var body: some Scene {
WindowGroup {
ContentView()
}
}
}
I’m aware notification responses may be delivered via launchOptions on cold start, but I’m unsure how to bridge that cleanly into a SwiftUI lifecycle app without reverting to UIKit.
"As we announced in October, the Certification Authority (CA) for Apple Push Notification service (APNs) is changing. APNs will update the server certificates in sandbox on January 20, 2025, and in production on x date, 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."
As we are using firebase for receiving notifications and azure notification hub, I read that there is nothing we as developers need to do and will be handled by the providers right?
Hi, I'm experiencing an issue with my app. I use Firebase as my server, and it is great. Still, there is one issue: when I send push notifications from my app to users, the users will get the notification if the app is open, but not when it is closed. I have tried many solutions to fix it, even asking AI, but the issue is still there. I would be happy to give you access to Firebase and the Xcode workspace, as I have no clue how to fix it.
We have been getting several reports in the past 2 weeks of APNs notifications being either heavily delayed or not delivered at all.
We have two apps, one of which has a Notification Service Extension and one of which does not. We have had users of both reporting sporadic notification problems.
Looking at the sysdiagnose logs from one example, it looks like the notification was actually processed by our notification extension in a timely fashion, but was not displayed to the user.
An example event we investigated it the following (now perhaps a little long in the tooth):
2025-10-31T14:32:54
apnsId=EE3E002D-26DE-B4F5-5E9B-5E0C1E1B6B3D
We think we have correlated this with device logs:
default 2025-10-31 10:32:54.472054 -0400 [EDE9521D-8A65-4588-8AE8-D3D78B9E5EA5] Received replacement content for notification request 859D-ABC7 [ hasContent: 1 attachments: 0 ]
However there is no other reference until the app was launched about 1.5 minutes later:
default 2025-10-31 10:34:26.875327 -0400 [..] Got 1 delivered notifications [ hasCompletionHandler: 1 ]
When trying to reproduce, when I saw notifications bannered, the trace I saw was "Got 0 delivered notifications". What's the significance of "Got 1 delivered notifications" in this case?
Historically, SpringBoard logs have shown detailed trace about the handling of notifications (which was very useful in narrowing down the slowness of notifications due to Apple Intelligence, reported on our side as FB16253547, which doesn't seem to have been triaged but it looks like was resolved around iOS 18.2.1 or iOS 18.3); however it seems that now sysdiagnoses are only containing <1 minute of trace from SpringBoard.
Is there any way to extend the trace from SpringBoard that is included in sysdiagnoses?
I see there was also https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/806367 around the same time we started receiving reports. However I think my hypothesis is that this is a client-side issue, and notifications are being delivered to devices, just not presented correctly.
Will try and collect a bit more data and file some Feedbacks and provide them here, but wanted to also flag here in case there are any others experiencing similar.
I’m getting calls from Pakistan every hour. I cant block them because it’s a different number every time. I have downloaded the new beta version of the upcoming software update and it allows you to set to ask a question before unknown callers ring through. It’s not working and my phone is constantly ringing. I can’t block unknown callers as I use my phone for work. How can I silence ringing from calls specifically from Pakistan Using the country code?
Topic:
App & System Services
SubTopic:
Notifications
Issue:
I am making an application that stores data locally from notifications fired from the server. Everything works fine in the foreground but the background is having problems with not being triggered when notifications are fired.
So we tried firing 2 notifications at the same time, including default and silent types. But the problem continues to arise on ios 18, when firing multiple times like that, the trigger is not handling all notifications, leading to data loss. I tried on ios 15 and it worked fine.
Environment:
Device or Simulator: Iphone 11 pro max (iOS 18.3.2
Steps to Reproduce:
Open app, allow received notification.
Move app to background mode or terminate app.
Sent 2 notifications:
a. Default notification payload:
{
"aps": {
"content-available": 1
},
”notification”: {…},
“alert”: {..},
“data": "some_value"
}
b. Silent notification payload:
{
"aps": {
"content-available": 1
},
”data": "some_value"
}
What I've Tried:
Trigger notification in function:
application(_:didReceiveRemoteNotification:fetchCompletionHandler:)
Handle write data to local storage in above function, put it in background thread also.
Thanks in advance!
Topic:
App & System Services
SubTopic:
Notifications
Tags:
APNS
Cloud and Local Storage
Background Tasks
Hello Everyone,
I have some questions regarding the Apple notification alert update received in October 2024 for the APNs server certificate update.
We are using Azure Notification Hub to receive push notifications. I confirmed with the Azure team, and they have already implemented the required changes. However, push notifications are still not working in the sandbox environment.
Could you please provide any insights on this?
Thanks.
Is there anyway that I could use AVAudioSession, AVAudioPlayer or anything similar in Notification Service Extension?
I am trying to implement Audio Playback in the Notification Service Extension to play specific audio file when receiving Notification regardless the app state(foreground, background or killed), but I am not able to activate audio session in Notification Service Extension.
NSError *sessionError = nil;
BOOL success = [[AVAudioSession sharedInstance] setCategory:AVAudioSessionCategoryPlayback error:&sessionError];
success = [[AVAudioSession sharedInstance] setActive:YES error:&sessionError];
if (!success) {
NSLog(@"Error activating audio session: %@", sessionError);
}
Below is the error that I got when I am trying to run the code above in Notification Service Extension.
Error Domain=NSOSStatusErrorDomain Code=561015905 "Session activation failed" UserInfo={NSLocalizedDescription=Session activation failed}