I have spent 6+ hours reading messages from 2018+ in Discourse Meta, talking with the Discourse AI Bot, using multiple models to do deep research, and testing. I’m looking to confirm my understanding. Thank you for your patience, I realize this may get asked a lot. High level success: I value a great UX, a great UX requires a user to think the least to accomplish what they want to accomplish. I’m expecting WhatsApp-like new message notifications to my iOS device (iPhone 15 Pro, iOS 26.2). At the highest level, it seems the “best answer” to this dilemma/iOS limitations is Discourse Hub. It uses polling, so there is a slight delay, but this is the current best/most stable way to get iOS / Android push notifications from a self-hosted Discourse instance (on docker). If yes, does anyone know what kind of delays we’re talking about, minutes or hours? I can’t find specifics on that. If #1 is true, it seems the push notifications are limited to chats if I read that correctly? I have spent many many hours testing between Mac OS X Safari, Chrome, Safari Incognito, Chrome Incognito, in my test environment amongst multiple users. Paired with about 20+ attempts at setting up and re-installing the PWA. I’ve triple checked notification settings on the PWA. I’ve tested with multiple accounts, in different browsers, all via sending chat messages in discourse. I deliberately logged out of all sessions to ensure an account wasn’t active. Short of the initial “notifications enabled” push message, after 3+ hours of testing and 20+ different re-installs of the PWA amongst multiple accounts, I can’t get a single pushover notification to show or a badge on the PWA. Does this sound like the accurate state of PWA push notifications on iOS in January 2026? I don’t have an Android phone to test with. It seems like the primary reason for these inconsistent behaviors with push notifications is due to iOS Safari notification “technical things.” At this moment in time, there is no light at the end of the tunnel. There is an option for pushover app, although that requires setting up an account and $5/month. If I’m looking to create a great UX for my users, something like pushover is certainly not an option. I haven’t used ntfy, maybe that’s easier. Even then, probably wouldn’t ask my users to do that. This is a social group of non-technical people. I have had push notifications on desktop Safari work. Emails also work ok. If people could self-auth to get notifications in a third party app of their choosing, eg. Telegram or WhatsApp, that might have potential, I see https://www.discourse.org/plugins/chat-integration for Telegram. This could be a workaround… although the only app people would likely have in my world is Telegram. I’m not opposed to a Twilio integration, even if I was paying for text messages via Twilio. I don’t see an option for this or plugin. This move would be purely out of desperation. And I’d have to charge subscription for 1-3 cents per message or whatever twill charges. Going for a “native Discourse iOS app” is likely not feasible and is highly likely to get rejected in the Apple App Store, confirm? I’ve seen many reports of this. It’s possible push notifications work better and are consistent/reliable on Android? Tldr; January 2026, the single best most reliable and consistent way of getting push notifications to iOS/Android like a native app is to use Discourse hub. PS. I really secretly hope I’m missing something, and my experience is not accurate.

On Android, the PWA should work very well. Multiple staff members use PWAs daily. On iOS, sites hosted by Discourse get full push notifications in DiscourseHub. Self-hosters get push notifications via polling, yes. [image] zefoo: If yes, does anyone know what kind of delays we’re talking about, minutes or hours? Unfortunately, the DiscourseHub polling for self-hosters relies on system background tasks. They are not guaranteed to run at any particular time… so, nobody knows what the delays are. The OS decides. If you use the app regularly, I think (with very little certainly) that the polling happens roughly every 15 minutes. If you don’t use the app regularly, it can be considerably less often. [image] zefoo: If #1 is true, it seems the push notifications are limited to chats if I read that correctly? No, it should be for topics, chats, PMs. [image] zefoo: Going for a “native Discourse iOS app” is likely not feasible and is highly likely to get rejected in the Apple App Store, confirm? A webview wrapper app has a high chance of getting rejected, yes. A full native app, probably not. But a full native app is considerably more complicated to build.

I am also very confused by the push notification situation. It works as a PWA on Mac but not on iOS. I get badges but no notifications (apart from the initial “success” one). Why doesn’t it work? I am hosted using communiteq.com and do not want to have to install an app.

[image] Shauny: I am hosted using communiteq.com Our hosting does not impose any restrictions and it works well with notifications on iOS. It is generally pretty fragile though, especially when you’re an admin - impersonating other accounts seems to break the notification setup.

I’ve had tech support test it and it does not seem to work (I don’t do any impersonating or anything like that).

[image] Shauny: does not seem to work The conclusion there was that it didn’t work on your specific device, if I recall correctly? I understand that this is not a satisfactory answer but asking “why doesn’t it work” is maybe a bit too general. That said, it would be very cool if there was a good troubleshooting guide for iOS.

No, it hasn’t worked for anyone in our community on iOS devices.

I decided to test it again so I turned it on and now it’s working! :exploding_head: Maybe a Discourse update fixed it? Who knows!

[image] Shauny: Maybe a Discourse update fixed it? I’d bet my money on an iOS update.

Has anyone else confirmed this? I just deleted from home screen and re-added. That’d be awesome if notifications were enabled!

It should work for any Discourse instance added to home screen on iOS 16.4+. If you have Meta added to the home screen this reply from my shall trigger one.

iOS/Android Push Notifications on Self-Hosted Discourse (Docker)

Product Support

RGJ (Richard - Communiteq) April 4, 2026, 5:22am 16

Yes, this! Instead of having a user_id I think they should be having a user_auth_tokens.id ?

Topic		Replies	Views
iOS Mobile App Notifications Product Support	53	10328	June 7, 2022
Push Notifications for Self-Hosted on Discourse Hub? Feature push-notifications	3	301	March 18, 2026
Push notifications settings Product Support chat	8	3307	January 19, 2023
Push Notifications on iOS Product Support	9	3268	January 20, 2020
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iOS/Android Push Notifications on Self-Hosted Discourse (Docker)

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