# iOS Mobile App Notifications
**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/ios-mobile-app-notifications/53189
**Category:** Support
**Created:** [November 21, 2016, 11:25am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/ios-mobile-app-notifications/53189 "2016-11-21T11:25:41Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@david](https://meta.discourse.org/u/david)
#### Post date: [November 21, 2016, 11:25am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/ios-mobile-app-notifications/53189/1 "2016-11-21T11:25:42Z")
I understand that self-hosted Discourse instances do not get push notifications through the mobile app. However from reading through the meta topic about the app, it looks like notifications should still work using iOS’s background fetch (albeit a bit delayed).
This doesn’t seem to work for my forum, and I’m not sure how to go about figuring out what’s wrong. Could it be because my forum is login-only? Is there any way to get logs from the app?
Push notifications for meta are working fine
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### Author:  [@fefrei](https://meta.discourse.org/u/fefrei)
#### Post date: [November 21, 2016, 1:13pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/ios-mobile-app-notifications/53189/2 "2016-11-21T13:13:32Z")
Have you been using the app regularly?
iOS decides when and how often to wake the app, and it will only wake apps often that are used frequently.
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### Author:  [@david](https://meta.discourse.org/u/david)
#### Post date: [November 21, 2016, 1:37pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/ios-mobile-app-notifications/53189/3 "2016-11-21T13:37:46Z")
Yeah I use it frequently (every few hours)
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### Author:  [@sam](https://meta.discourse.org/u/sam)
#### Post date: [November 22, 2016, 1:24am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/ios-mobile-app-notifications/53189/4 "2016-11-22T01:24:38Z")
Will see if I can add a diagnostic window, but background fetch by apple has been super flakey
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### Author:  [@oreXelpirT](https://meta.discourse.org/u/oreXelpirT)
#### Post date: [November 29, 2016, 6:06am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/ios-mobile-app-notifications/53189/5 "2016-11-29T06:06:56Z")
Excuse me if this is too off-topic (it somewhat relates), I didn’t think it needed a new topic and the old mega-thread is closed, but why is there not an option for sound notifications like most other applications with notifications have?
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### Author:  [@sam](https://meta.discourse.org/u/sam)
#### Post date: [November 29, 2016, 6:16am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/ios-mobile-app-notifications/53189/6 "2016-11-29T06:16:14Z")
Mainly cause I find sound notifications obnoxious 🙂 but I guess I can get the argument that people should be able to opt in for sound if they need it. (visually impaired for example)
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### Author:  [@jomaxro](https://meta.discourse.org/u/jomaxro)
#### Post date: [November 29, 2016, 6:21am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/ios-mobile-app-notifications/53189/7 "2016-11-29T06:21:06Z")
> [@sam](#):
>
> (visually impaired for example)
Not just visually impaired, but there are many other situations where people need volume.
An example: over the summer I work at a children’s camp, with everything that is going on I frequently can’t feel my phone vibrate, so volume is critical.
Another example: my father works in a hospital, and is frequently around many machines that have moving parts, tubes of air, things that vibrate, etc. When he gets a page he **needs** the volume to know that there is a notification.
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### Author:  [@oreXelpirT](https://meta.discourse.org/u/oreXelpirT)
#### Post date: [November 29, 2016, 7:07am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/ios-mobile-app-notifications/53189/8 "2016-11-29T07:07:14Z")
Maybe just have it disabled by default (if that’s possible). I can see people not wanting them, but that’s why there’s an option to turn them off in the notification settings.
Also, because there’s no sound, there’s no vibration either, even on the Apple Watch
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### Author:  [@jtbayly](https://meta.discourse.org/u/jtbayly)
#### Post date: [February 7, 2018, 3:22pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/ios-mobile-app-notifications/53189/9 "2018-02-07T15:22:35Z")
Is it really still the case that Discourse is unable to provide notifications to the billions of iOS users, unless our site goes with one specific hosting company that charges way more than we can afford?
I would have expected this to change by now, but this is the latest topic I found addressing the issue.
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### Author:  [@Falco](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Falco)
#### Post date: [February 7, 2018, 4:56pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/ios-mobile-app-notifications/53189/10 "2018-02-07T16:56:45Z")
You mean:
> Is it really still the case that **Apple** is unable to provide web notifications to the billions of iOS Safari users, unless our company goes out of our way to create a native mobile app that wraps the browser and pays for all the associated costs?
Unfortunately yes, but now that next iOS will get service workers, maybe in 2019, after Edge?
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### Author:  [@jtbayly](https://meta.discourse.org/u/jtbayly)
#### Post date: [February 7, 2018, 5:02pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/ios-mobile-app-notifications/53189/12 "2018-02-07T17:02:14Z")
Look, I don’t care who you want to blame. The fact of the matter is you just told me that Discourse _might_ work in 2019.
Thanks.
(And for the record, I blame Apple too, but _somehow_ other software packages have managed to do things to, you know, work around the issue in a way that lets you send notifications for less than $100/month.)
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### Author:  [@sam](https://meta.discourse.org/u/sam)
#### Post date: [February 7, 2018, 5:47pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/ios-mobile-app-notifications/53189/13 "2018-02-07T17:47:00Z")
Oh so the free software you are running is not good enough because you expect us to run a free gateway that forwards notifications to your self hosted community?
And you expect us to pay the bill to run the web server, the staff to ensure we never forward notifications for hate groups, because… reasons?
The push notifications protocol is open, the app is open source, you can roll your own
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### Author:  [@Hector](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Hector)
#### Post date: [February 7, 2018, 5:52pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/ios-mobile-app-notifications/53189/14 "2018-02-07T17:52:22Z")
There is a new feature request for Webkit. Lets see if there is some action there.
> **[182566 – Feature Request: Add support for the ServiceWorkerRegistration's...](https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=182566)**
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### Author:  [@jtbayly](https://meta.discourse.org/u/jtbayly)
#### Post date: [February 7, 2018, 6:43pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/ios-mobile-app-notifications/53189/15 "2018-02-07T18:43:08Z")
I’m fully aware of the design decisions that led to you refusing to budge on integrating with Tapatalk, for example, which would have allowed push notifications on iOS. I don’t blame you for that.
But let’s be completely clear about one thing, it’s not helpful to pretend as though I was demanding _you_ provide the infrastructure necessary for push notifications on iOS. I wasn’t even _requesting_ that. There are other ways of making it happen, which I assume you are aware of. I don’t know if any of them are truly workable technically or financially. I just know that your comment isn’t helpful.
I don’t use Discourse. I did for a short while a few years ago, and I gave back in the little ways I could.
Discourse will become a viable possibility for me to use the moment it stops treating iOS users as second-class citizens for less than $100/month or I can afford $100/month. You can whine all you want about how Apple does things a way you don’t like, but in the end my evaluation is not unfair.
This has the optics of the typical two-tier OSS package, where some important features in the software are locked behind a paywall. If you want to talk up how your software is free to shut me up, go ahead, but it rings a bit hollow when your decision about how to solve push notifications in your “free” software just _happens_ to require people to pay you $100/month (at a minimum.)
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### Author:  [@sam](https://meta.discourse.org/u/sam)
#### Post date: [February 7, 2018, 6:53pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/ios-mobile-app-notifications/53189/16 "2018-02-07T18:53:52Z")
> [@jtbayly](#):
>
> There are other ways of making it happen, which I assume you are aware of.
OK, can you please back this up?
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### Author:  [@jtbayly](https://meta.discourse.org/u/jtbayly)
#### Post date: [February 7, 2018, 7:30pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/ios-mobile-app-notifications/53189/17 "2018-02-07T19:30:25Z")
I already did. Tapatalk. And I also don’t see why you’re being so hostile. I already said that I don’t blame you for refusing to go that route.
Here’s another example:
> **[Customer Engagement Platform for Email, Push Notifications, & SMS](https://onesignal.com)**
>
> The world's leader for mobile push notifications, web push, SMS, email and in-app messaging. Trusted by 2 million+ businesses to send 12 billion+ messages per…
I’ll also remind you before you say “Gotcha” and tear me apart for suggesting options that won’t work for some reason of what I said before that you didn’t quote: “I don’t know if any of them are truly workable technically or financially.”
Let me try my hand at answering from your perspective:
“Unfortunately, due to design decisions that we made early on and that we still find to be central to the usability of Discourse as a top-notch communications software package, combined with choices that Apple has made that continue to surprise us, we are sadly caught in a place where, for the time being, we cannot support iOS as well as we wish we could. Have you considered simply going with fetch instead of push on iOS? [But I wouldn’t suggest this if it is still not working consistently.] We will continue to do our best to make Discourse work well for every platform without compromising on the amazing features we already provide. We continue to hope that Apple will change their mind about push in mobile Safari, and in the meantime, if you have any ideas for how we could make push a reality for the rest of the Discourse community, we’d be happy to hear them and/or get code contributions! Here’s to hoping Discourse can meet your needs in the future. Cheers!”
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### Author:  [@david](https://meta.discourse.org/u/david)
#### Post date: [February 7, 2018, 7:36pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/ios-mobile-app-notifications/53189/18 "2018-02-07T19:36:36Z")
> [@jtbayly](#):
>
> OneSignal - Multi-platform Push Notification Service
> [@Whitelisted Discourse app with Push Notifications via OneSignal](https://meta.discourse.org/t/whitelisted-discourse-app-with-push-notifications-via-onesignal/58247):
>
> Following up on the discussion [here](https://meta.discourse.org/t/what-if-i-want-to-white-label-the-discourse-mobile-apps/53063/9), I have successfully set up a fork of the official Discourse app that can send push notifications via the OneSignal API. There are two parts to this: [discourse-onesignal](https://github.com/pmusaraj/discourse-onesignal/) - a Discourse plugin that sends Push Notifications to OneSignal’s REST API and a [Discourse Mobile Single Site App](https://github.com/pmusaraj/discourse-mobile-single-site-app) built similarly to the official Discourse Mobile app (using React Native), but using OneSignal for notifications and a simplified interface to suit the needs of a single app. I…
For people who don’t have the resources to build their own app, discourse-chat-integration provides solutions for real-time group notifications:
> [@Discourse Chat Integrations](https://meta.discourse.org/t/chatroom-integration-plugin-discourse-chat-integration/66522):
>
> information_source Chat Integration is for using an external chat system together with Discourse — you may be looking for [Discourse Chat](https://meta.discourse.org/t/discourse-chat/230881) which adds Chat functionality directly to Discourse. discourse2Summaryopen_bookInstall Guide The Discourse Chat Integration plugin lets you send messages in your preferred chat platform when something happens in Discourse. Messages can be triggered by: New topics New replies Messages to a group Mentions of a group Functio…
On my own self-hosted forum, we use telegram to provide push notifications to users on mobile devices:
> [@Telegram Notifications Plugin (discourse-telegram-notifications)](https://meta.discourse.org/t/telegram-notifications-plugin-discourse-telegram-notifications/60483):
>
> [Discourse Telegram Notifications Plugin](https://github.com/davidtaylorhq/discourse-telegram-notifications) This plugin allows users to receive their notifications via a Telegram bot, allowing them to turn off email notifications and still keep up-to-date. success You can “like” posts, and respond to them via the bot. Here’s a quick demo video: Before Starting Your forum must be using HTTPS, and have force\_https turned on Your forum must be accessible to the internet, not only an internal network (in development, give [ngrok](https://ngrok.com/) a try). Getting t…
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### Author:  [@jomaxro](https://meta.discourse.org/u/jomaxro)
#### Post date: [February 7, 2018, 7:46pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/ios-mobile-app-notifications/53189/19 "2018-02-07T19:46:52Z")
@jtbayly - I believe things may have started on the wrong foot here. The first sentence in your first post appears to put the blame on Discourse (the company), and that the issue is financial related (for the cost of our hosting). It’s hard to be friendly when the first post is accusatory.
> [@jtbayly](#):
>
> Is it really still the case that Discourse is unable to provide notifications to the billions of iOS users, unless our site goes with one specific hosting company that charges way more than we can afford?
There are details in previous topics about the Mobile App, but in short a decision was made to use the native push notification system for both major mobile operating systems. Both systems require that each site allowed to send a push notification be registered, which we do for the sites that we host. It’s not technically feasible to support every self-hosted site out there, as we don’t know all the URLs.
As per [Things to consider before deciding to white-label the Discourse Mobile apps](https://meta.discourse.org/t/what-if-i-want-to-white-label-the-discourse-mobile-apps/53063) you can modify the open source app to suit your community. David shared a number of options that work as well, including the OneSignal push notification service. If you have an Apple iOS developer license it should also be possible to hook into Apple’s native push notification service too.
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### Author:  [@jtbayly](https://meta.discourse.org/u/jtbayly)
#### Post date: [February 7, 2018, 8:51pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/ios-mobile-app-notifications/53189/20 "2018-02-07T20:51:29Z")
Yes, my comment is disbelieving that this is still the state of things. But it only sounds accusatory, because the optics are awful. I was under the impression that the only way I could get notification was to use _your_ hosting company. I asked if that was true. The first answer I got was in the affirmative and finger-pointing at Apple. When I pointed out that other projects had managed to do this in a way that didn’t tie you to one provider, I got the dumb answer that every OSS company gives: “Roll your own.” All indications are that nobody has done it and I’d be starting from scratch. Ok. Thanks for that.
Turns out the first answer I was given was wrong. I’m _not_ tied to one provider. There are various ways to get notifications on iOS, including some really creative ones that use other apps. Cool.
Seriously. Thanks @david
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### Author:  [@sam](https://meta.discourse.org/u/sam)
#### Post date: [February 7, 2018, 11:55pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/ios-mobile-app-notifications/53189/21 "2018-02-07T23:55:47Z")
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