Before OneSignal, our company was a mobile game studio called Hiptic Games. Our experiences at Hiptic helped us see the need for a simpler, more reliable, and more powerful messaging platform to improve user engagement.

In many ways, we built OneSignal with game developers in mind. The top 25% of mobile games have an average Day 28 retention of just 4% and the cost of acquiring a user that eventually makes a purchase is over $40 USD. Yet, most mobile games still don’t implement basic best practices for improving user engagement and retention through messaging.

In this guide, we’ll walk through the four main user-engagement channels that every mobile game studio may want to leverage — Push Notifications, In-App Messaging, Email, and SMS — and the best practices for each. We’ll refer to the OneSignal platform for examples of how game developers can implement these techniques, but the lessons and best practices apply regardless of the implementation path you choose.

Ask For Push Notification Permission

The way you ask for push notification permission in your game is an important area to start with because so many game developers get it wrong.

In the past, iOS and Android had different ways of managing user permissions for notifications. That changed in 2022 when Android updated its push notification permission process in alignment with Apple as a part of Android 13. Now, both major mobile operating systems require that user opt-in to receive notifications before they can be sent. Some of the biggest mistakes that games maker are during the iOS and Android opt-in process.

Reducing Friction from the Push Notification Permission Process

How about... No! When did you last click “Allow” to notifications without a clear understanding of what you were signing up to receive? Yet, it seems nearly half of the top mobile games on iOS ask for push notification permission when the app is first downloaded without providing any added context.

Game developers tend to provide one of two explanations for this less-than-ideal prompt:

1. They haven’t gotten around to asking in a better way: This is one of the sadder reasons we’ve heard. Push notifications are often the only way to re-engage inactive users, yet many game developers don’t value them as a channel. Asking users for permission with the basic native iOS permission dialog is a bad user experience. Attention to detail here is just as important as it is in the rest of a game’s design.
2. Their opt-in rate is higher than doing it a different way: We’re always skeptical of this claim. What other ways have they tried that could be worse? It’s also important to consider the quality of opt-ins. Gamers who are more sophisticated, more experienced, and more likely to spend money are likely more inclined to click “Don’t Allow” without more context.

Apple recommends that developers always provide context when asking for notification permission, and those same best practices now apply to Android as well:

“Make the request in a context that helps the user to understand why your app needs authorization. In a task-tracking app that sends reminder notifications, you could make the request after the user schedules a first task. Sending the request in context provides a better user experience than automatically requesting authorization on the first launch, because the user can more easily see what purpose the notifications serve.”

You always want to give the user a clear incentive and understanding of why they should grant notification permission. In a game, some common reasons might be:

1. To get a notification when their friend sends them a virtual gift.
2. To be notified when an in-game event begins.
3. To be notified when their energy meter is full so they can make more progress in the game.

One of the better implementations is Halfbrick’s new Fruit Ninja 2, which provides an excellent two-step permission prompt that users trigger during early gameplay.

Remember that once users click “Don’t Allow” on the iOS native permission dialog, you don’t get another chance to show it, so you need to make that chance count. We recommend ensuring users are genuinely interested in opting into notifications when you show them. But be careful not to wait too long. If you wait to ask after 15 minutes of gameplay, you’ll miss the opportunity to send re-engagement notifications to users who don’t make it that far.

Provisional Notifications are an Option

Apple provides a powerful but rarely-used feature to send notifications to users on a trial basis, without the user needing to click "Allow" on a permissions dialog. Players can then evaluate the notifications and decide whether to authorize them.

These "Provisional Notifications" have several limitations, including not showing up on the lock screen, but they are an excellent way to message users who have not yet provided direct notification permission.

Tools like OneSignal can help simplify the process

OneSignal’s in-app messaging feature can be used to simplify the process of asking for push notification permission without extra required code. Developers can also customize the permission prompt on the OneSignal dashboard without requiring new versions of the app to be released.

What about Android?

Like Apple, Android apps now require system-level permission to send notifications. Topwar Studios does this well for the Android version of their game “Top War: Battle Game.”

OneSignal has several features to make this easier to implement, including the OneSignal.setSubscription() method. This method can be used to turn on or off notifications for the current device. OneSignal also has a feature called Data Tags, which are key/value pairs that can be used to store the user’s notification preferences for the device.

Starting in Android Oreo (8.0+), Google introduced the concept of Notification Categories (Sometimes called “Notification Channels”). All Android apps must define at least one notification category and then send notifications linked to this category.

Android applications can set various default properties of each category, such as the importance level or notification sound. Users can also override these settings for each application in their device settings.

Despite the powerful features of Categories, many games don’t use them correctly. For example, “Top War: Battle Game” only has two notification categories. The second one listed, “AdMob Offline Notifications,” is related to a bug in Google’s AdMob SDK.

If they chose to do so, Top War could link their in-game notifications to these category settings, so users have a more consistent user experience.

For OneSignal clients, the OneSignal dashboard and SDK provide several features to make it easier to create and manage Android Notification Categories without adding extra code or releasing app updates when modifications are made.

Leverage Email and SMS

So, how about asking for email? One surprising finding is that the vast majority of mobile games do not prompt players for their email. But when we talk to growth leaders at top game companies, they resoundingly recommend email as a crucial channel for re-engagement and increased revenue.

There are three primary reasons to collect user email:

1. Email is an excellent channel to use alongside notifications for user engagement. Especially since not all users opt-in to notifications .

Because emails are very affordable to send (OneSignal's pricing scales affordably for both small and large companies), emails act as a second channel to keep users engaged. Learn more about why email can be a big difference-maker for mobile apps.

2. Email works exceptionally well for adult gamers, who are also more likely to make in-game purchases.

One product manager from a big game company reported a 20% lift in revenue from top spenders after targeting them with email campaigns.

3. With the deprecation of IDFA, email is a crucial identifier for retargeting users.

A common strategy for user re-engagement is to show ads to players on platforms like Facebook. With Apple's decision to deprecate the Identifier for Advertisers (IDFA) in early 2021, email has become the best possible user identifier to use for targeted advertising.

Getting users to provide their email addresses can sometimes be difficult, so it's crucial to provide users with content and incentive. Supporting sign-in with Facebook or other providers can help streamline the process and skip the need to validate email addresses.

One crucial detail is that Apple's recent policy updates require applications that provide login through third-party services to provide "Sign in with Apple" as an equivalent log in option.

Bubblegum Games' "Project Makeover" chooses to provide both "Sign in with Apple" and "Sign in with Facebook" as options as ways to get users' emails and create profiles for users to see their progress. Each option has a clear in-game incentive to maximize conversion rates.

Project Makeover chooses not to ask users for an email in other ways, which may reduce their opt-in rate, but this also removes users' need to confirm their email before receiving messages.

When sending emails, it's critical to provide value to the reader at every touchpoint. High open rates and engagement rates will help improve your email's visibility to users (and reduce the chance that your emails end up in the spam folder).

Is SMS worthwhile?

SMS is one of the least commonly used messaging channels for games, and for a good reason: SMS messages with an image can cost 2 cents to send or more, depending on the country, which can get expensive quickly.

However, when used in games with a high player LTV (Lifetime Value), SMS is a compelling channel to stay connected to users. SMS has the highest open rate of all channels, and SMS links get clicked by about 19% of recipients, in contrast to just 2% or 3% for email.

Games or apps that choose to require user accounts may be the best able to utilize SMS. For example, the game video app Donut offers “continue with phone number” as login and identity verification mechanism.

This is handy for apps that want to stay connected to their users, even those that may have uninstalled the app. In this case, to collect user feedback:

It may also work well for segments of particularly valuable customers, like those who have previously made an in-game purchase.

OneSignal supports all three channels — push notifications, email, and SMS, and unifies the features in a single platform and SDK to make it easy to implement messaging and personalization across these channels.

Optimizing Message Content and Frequency

Hellosaurus does an excellent job of setting up a notification drip campaign to drive user conversion to their subscription service while sprinkling in various updates about their app.

In general, messages sent by games fall under one of these three categories:

1. In-game events that occur
2. Game news
3. Promotions

In each case, it’s crucial to think of the message as a core part of the user experience with your app. If your messages' quality does not match the quality of your in-game experience, users are much more likely to block your messages or uninstall your game entirely.

Just as games require creativity to make a fun in-game experience, games can also bring this creativity to the messaging experience outside of the game.

Keep in mind that people sometimes have hundreds of apps on their devices, with gamers being the most prolific in installing new apps. Given this, every message you send, whether over push, email, or SMS must stand out from the crowd and be relevant to its recipient.

Generic messages such as “You haven’t played in a while. Come back today.” are unlikely to impact user retention. However, personalized messages, or those that provide an incentive, perform far better: “George, your hero is nearly at level 10. Get double XP for every level you complete today.”

The frequency of messages you send may vary greatly and depend on your messaging channels.

Some of the best apps have found that there’s practically no limit to how many push notifications you can send, as long as each one is part of an overall excellent user experience. An important technique is to make notifications that are not time-sensitive be delivered silently. If done well, notifications can act as a core experience of your game, providing a valuable experience to the user when they look at their device and drawing them in at the right time.

For games that are concerned about user churn if they send too many messages, a good rule of thumb is to send the same number of daily notifications (or emails) as to how frequently players open the game. For example, if new users play a game roughly three times in the first week after installing it, then three messages per week is a reasonable limit.

Using Modern Messaging Capabilities to Improve Your UX and Boost Player Loyalty

Every messaging channel has unique capabilities to make the messages more visible, engaging, or powerful. Yet, many of these capabilities are often overlooked by game developers. It's important to understand the strengths and limitations of each channel to create a cohesive messaging strategy.

iOS Push Notifications

In new versions of iOS, notifications can have a wide range of interactive customization options, including images, gifs, videos, and more.

Services like OneSignal help to simplify the process of creating these interactive notifications with built-in support for rich media, along with example code and documentation.

iOS notifications can also be customized with custom sounds, grouped into threads, or made to replace a previous notification.

iOS 16 Live Activities

In late 2022, Apple released a new engagement feature called Live Activities. This widget-like feature is a type of interactive push notification designed by Apple to enable iOS apps to provide real-time updates to their users from the lock screen. iOS game developers can use Live Activities to keep users updated on game events, conversations, scores, milestones, and promotions in real time to seamlessly re-engage and retain players.

Android Push Notifications

Similar to iOS, Android notifications support a wide range of customizations, including various image sizes, notification sounds, notification privacy settings (via Notification Categories), background images, interactivity options, and more.

Some of the more advanced customizations on the Android platform can get complicated due to the need to support a wide range of Android devices and operating system versions. We recommend using all of the basic Android notification features, including images and custom categories, and then gradually expanding the usage of more advanced features as you grow your app.

In-App Messages

There’s no “one best way” to create in-app messages, but just like every other part of your game, applying creativity, design, and a user-experience-focused mindset is vital. For inspiration, check out these 6 examples of ways to use in-app messaging to enhance your game UX.

Tools like OneSignal can simplify this process by providing a simple but powerful WYSIWYG editor for in-app message creation and targeting. OneSignal also allows in-app messages to be created and customized without updating your app.

In addition to creating in-app messages via the Dashboard, you can also create in-app messages with custom HTML.

Email

Contrary to what many believe, email continues to be an evolving channel. Ensuring your emails are well-designed and leveraging modern email features has never been more critical.

Regarding design, Really Good Emails is an excellent resource for design ideas and inspiration. Remember that players can read emails on many devices, and optimizing for the mobile email experience is often best.

New email features like Google’s “Dynamic Email” can be handy for products where email is a core part of the experience.

Advanced features may not make sense for some mobile games, but when used correctly, they can positively impact user engagement and experience.

SMS

Finally, SMS has had fewer changes over the years and generally has limited support for visual customizations. For this reason, the text content of your SMS message is more important than anything else.

SMS messages should be heavily personalized, relevant, and timely for the user. Given that they can be disruptive to users and expensive to send, they should be used sparingly and only when it makes sense.

Future versions of Android will begin to categorize messages into “personal, transactions, OTP (one-time passwords), offers, and more.” There’s also been gradual progress on a new SMS update, RCS, that will bring more interactivity and customization to messages, but this has yet to be widely supported or adopted.

Automating Your Messaging Strategy to Scale with Your Game

In today’s competitive app marketplace, the most successful games are those that have mastered the art of delivering an exceptional and personalized experience to thousands or even millions of users simultaneously. The secret to success isn’t having more resources, personnel, time, or luck — it’s messaging automation. Whether you’ve just earned your first 100 users or you’re running a successful gaming studio, leveraging messaging automation is an essential best practice to unlock the potential for long-term revenue growth.

Although this buzzword can sound daunting, automating player onboarding, re-engagement, and other messaging flows saves game developers valuable time and resources and ultimately guarantees a more dynamic and personalized player experience. The best engagement tools make it easy to automatically segment and target players in real-time based on game interactions and milestones as well as use player data to personalize message content. Tools like OneSignal’s Journeys were specifically designed to simplify this automation process even for non-technical users and make it easy to create dynamic messaging workflows that span different channels and user touchpoints. This type of “set it up once and forget it” automation continues to pay dividends for successful international gaming studios like Beach Bum Games.

Analyzing the Performance of Your Messages

"What's a typical open rate for a message?" is one of the most common questions we hear from users. There's no one right answer since the values will vary greatly depending on the message's purpose, the channel it is sent on (push, email, or SMS), and the user base.

However, it's critical to track the ongoing performance of the messages you send to compare and refine your messaging strategies.

Opens or clicks are often not a useful metric. In the case of push notifications, many users who receive a message may open the app from its icon rather than tapping the notification itself. Furthermore, message clicks may not be closely correlated with long term user engagement or monetization.
For this reason, we recommend instrumenting tracking of multiple message metrics, including:

• Receive Rate (Did the user receive the message?)
• Open Rate (For email opens)
• Click-Through Rate
• App Influenced Opens (How many users opened the app within a short time after receiving a message)
• Custom Outcome Events (Could be engagement rate, purchases, or other desired actions)

Tools like OneSignal provide insight into these metrics for each channel and can help you understand and optimize your notification performance. These metrics can also be integrated with and sent to existing analytics systems that you may use to track in-game user activity. This analytics connection is an important component of analyzing your messages' short- and long-term impact.

Master User Communication in Mobile Games

Even the most talented developers overlook basic communication strategies that can help them outpace their competition. Our Mastering Communication in Mobile Games eBook delves into common messaging misconceptions and pitfalls and provides guidance about using these channels to create a seamless and “sticky” player experience.

As we approach two million users of the OneSignal platform, I wanted to share a little bit about our company's origin and mission.

I would have never imagined we’d pivot away from a successful business, but that’s why OneSignal exists today. In 2015, our founding team ran a fast-growing mobile game studio backed by Y-Combinator. My co-founder and I had previously started successful companies, and we teamed up to apply our combined experience to build an industry-leading mobile gaming business to entertain hundreds of millions of people worldwide.

As a game studio, we differentiated ourselves in several key ways: Our games were easy to pick up, beautifully designed, translated for over a dozen languages, and grew virally as players shared them with each other. Each game had exceptional reviews and was repeatedly featured by the Apple and Google App Stores.

As successful as we were, there remained a persistent limitation to our growth rate: The best mobile applications require a deep investment into user engagement and retention both in the app and outside of it. The majority of app engagement is driven by messages, such as emails or push notifications, that draw users back into the app experience. We watched as only some of our largest competitors invested the time and effort required to implement messaging infrastructure to send reliable, timely, and personalized messaging campaigns to increase engagement and cross-promote their apps. Meanwhile, we struggled to get the basics in place.

As important as messaging is to mobile app success, no vendor or open-source solution could meet our needs. Commercial solutions in the space felt like they were built with decade-old technology, requiring complex implementation and costly maintenance. We weren’t the only ones experiencing this problem; In our efforts to learn from our peers, we discovered that marketers and growth teams across the mobile industry were struggling to implement rudimentary messaging campaigns.

Y-Combinator’s motto is to “build something people want.” We soon recognized that millions of businesses like our own needed a modern customer engagement platform to improve their customer experience and retention and to increase their revenue. We chose to pivot our business to become OneSignal, following in the footsteps of many of the greatest product-led businesses that originated as game studios, including Slack, Discord, and Valve.

Our Founding Principles

As we started building OneSignal, we looked at all of the software products we liked most. From there, we decided on four key principles to define what we wanted to create:

1. A product every app can use - Anyone should be able to use OneSignal, whether they are a small startup or a big enterprise. We want to democratize access to our essential technology and have every mobile app in the world using OneSignal.
2. Great user experience is essential - Long-term success comes from building software that is delightful to use every day.
3. Impeccable infrastructure - Messaging is an essential part of every mobile experience. Our customers depend on us, so we must work flawlessly for each of them, day or night, large or small.
4. Great support for everyone - Excellent documentation backed up by human support. Whether a customer is big or small, free or paid, we ensure their success. Every business should know that they can count on us.

We took these principles seriously, even though we knew they would be difficult to achieve. We recognized that the effort required would ultimately lead to us building a better and more valuable business.

Reflecting on Our Growth

Today, OneSignal has grown to be the dominant customer engagement platform worldwide. Each month, thousands of businesses adopt OneSignal. The OneSignal SDK is installed in 20% of all mobile applications released in 2023, and our market share growth is accelerating.

Furthermore, our principles and our resulting product have positioned us as the #1 highest-rated product in our category, with a score of 96/100 on G2, the leading source of B2B customer reviews.

The majority of mobile applications still under-invest in their customer engagement strategies. Our team has worked tirelessly to build a product that solves a range of problems that still plague millions of businesses, including:

1. Limited or ineffective segmentation  - Many companies struggle to utilize the information they have about their customers to personalize their messages. This could be because their messaging platform has limited audience segmentation capabilities or because the platform lacks the necessary data integrations for real-time personalization.
2. Lack of attention to the customer journey - A customer’s experience with a mobile application occurs across multiple channels. These include the in-app experience, mobile push notifications, email, transactional messaging, and platform-specific features like iOS Live Activities. Before OneSignal, marketers struggled to assemble customer journeys that met customer expectations for consistency and relevance.
3. Lack of support for key channels - Today’s applications must engage with users across multiple messaging channels. Before OneSignal, many businesses only used one — typically just push notifications or email — rather than being able to easily use all key messaging channels in a single platform.
4. Not integrating data between systems - Not personalizing messages based on data about the customer from a CRM, CDP, Data Warehouse, or analytics tool.
5. Unreliable infrastructure - Utilizing poorly integrated or poorly built solutions that slow down their team or prevent the easy rollout of new messaging campaigns.

Every day, OneSignal helps hundreds of thousands of businesses solve these problems with a platform that is powerful, easy to adopt, delightful to use, and supported by a world-class team.

Planning for the Future

As much progress as we’ve made, we see ourselves at just the beginning of achieving our mission and helping every business intelligently communicate with its users. Over the coming months, we’re focused on a range of product areas, including:

• Further extending our best-in-class integrations with complementary products, including data warehouses, analytics platforms, customer data platforms, and CRMs.
• Supporting a growing number of advanced use cases for enterprises with needs related to campaign management, advanced user-level personalization, and experimentation.
• Providing deeper insights on message performance so customers can fine-tune their strategies and avoid over-messaging their users.
• Ensuring our onboarding and each feature is easy, elegant, and intuitive.
• Staying ahead of the evolving technology landscape, such as Apple and Google’s frequent improvements to the mobile messaging experience on their devices, and as marketers start to adopt generative AI for copy and image creation.
• Providing exceptional documentation, examples, best practice guidance, and human support every step of the way.

There is no such thing as an offline business anymore, and our approach uniquely positions us to help every online business deliver a better messaging experience to its customers. We’ve come a long way from our game studio roots, but we remain focused on building experiences that impact hundreds of millions of people every day.

Thank you to everyone who has joined us on this journey so far.

Push notifications are no longer limited to just mobile applications and websites.

Push notifications have been an essential way that mobile applications engage with users and provide a richer app experience. Today, they are becoming a key feature across other devices including TVs, Gaming Consoles, Tablets, Voice Assistants, and even Vehicles.

Below is an overview of each device and platform that supports push notifications and how marketers and developers can take advantage of them. We’ll also cover some popular platforms that do not yet support push notifications.

Operating Systems

iOS Mobile Push Notifications

Apple supports mobile push notifications for native applications on the iPhone and iPad.

To receive push notifications, a user must typically install a mobile application and grant permission to that application to send them notifications. Notifications can contain a variety of rich media elements, and they can support user interaction in more advanced cases. Below is an example of an interactive iOS push notification sent using OneSignal.

In addition to custom interactive elements, iOS notifications can use several built-in iOS controls, including the ability for the user to enter text without launching the app. This is useful for enabling users to reply to text messages by long-pressing a notification, without needing to launch the app.

Apps are the most common way to receive notifications on iOS. However, users can also be sent notifications for Passbook entries (such as when a flight is delayed), or as part of an iOS App Clip experience.

iOS supports both remote notifications and local notifications. The most successful iOS apps use push notifications to engage and delight users and keep pace with rising standards for app communication.

iOS notifications can be used for a variety of purposes, including:

• Sending a visible message to the user.
• Indicating that a phone or video call is being received by an application such as Skype or Whatsapp (VoIP notifications)
• Running background code, such as to update content in the application for later offline viewing. (Background Notifications)
• Updating a passbook entry (Passbook notifications)
• Updating the badge number icon that is overlaid on top of an app’s launch icon.

Additional Resources

• Apple Documentation on iOS Push Notifications
• OneSignal Mobile Push Quickstart

Android Push Notifications

Google’s Android operating system is among the most powerful when it comes to how applications can utilize notifications. Users can receive notifications from applications they install. They can also receive web push notifications through Android web browsers such as Chrome or Samsung Browser when they visit a website and grant notification permission.

Android notifications can contain images and a limited set of other content. However, unlike iOS notifications, they may not contain gifs, videos, or custom interactive elements.

Android does provide a few built-in interactive elements, such as the ability to reply to text messages (SMS).

Android notifications can be used for a variety of purposes, including:

• Sending a visible message to the user.
• Indicating that a phone or video call is being received by an application such as Skype or Whatsapp (VoIP notifications)
• Running background code, such as to update content in the application for later offline viewing. (Background Notifications)
• Updating a passbook entry (Passbook notifications)

Android notifications are typically delivered through Google’s FCM API. However, there are some exceptions. In China, FCM is not available, so notifications may be delivered through FCM-like APIs provided by Baidu, Tencent, or device manufacturers like Huawei. Also on some Huawei devices, FCM is not available, and Huawei’s push service (Called HMS) must be used instead.

Additional Resources

• Google Documentation on FCM Notifications
• OneSignal Mobile Push Quickstart
• OneSignal Huawei Setup Guide

macOS Push Notifications

Starting in macOS Big Sur, Apple has largely copied the APIs that exist for iOS push notifications and made them available in macOS. Similarly, iOS applications can be installed on newer Apple computers with the M1 Arm Processor or newer, with no changes required to how those applications register for or present notifications.

Beginning with macOS Monterey, Apple has made iOS 15+ features including notification focus modes and notification interruption levels available on macOS as well.

OneSignal provides support for macOS notifications through either the OneSignal iOS SDK for iOS apps running on Apple Silicon Macs, or by interacting with the OneSignal API for native macOS notifications.

macOS notifications can also be generated by websites, through the web push capabilities available in all desktop browsers including Chrome, Firefox, and Safari.

Additional Resources

• Apple documentation on macOS Notifications
• OneSignal Documentation on macOS Notification Setup
• OneSignal Web Push Documentation

Windows Push Notifications

Similar to macOS, Windows provides a rich notification center.

Windows notifications can also be generated by websites, through the web push capabilities available in all desktop browsers including Chrome and Firefox.

OneSignal supports sending Windows notifications through Microsoft’s WNS protocol. Please contact the OneSignal support team at support@onesignal.com if you need any help implementing OneSignal in your Windows application.

Additional Resources

• Microsoft documentation on Windows Push Notification Services
• OneSignal documentation on Windows Push Notifications
• OneSignal Web Push Documentation

ChromeOS Push Notifications

Similar to Windows and macOS, Google’s Chrome Operating System includes a notification center.

Because ChromeOS applications are built using the same technology as websites, developers can create ChromeOS notifications by implementing web push. For instance, you can use OneSignal's web push SDK to add push notifications to a ReactJS, Next.js, or Angular app. To learn more about how to add web push notifications to your Android app, check out our Web Push Quickstart Guide.

Additional Resources

• Google Chrome Notification API Documentation
• OneSignal Web Push Documentation

Web Browsers

Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Microsoft Edge, and Other Browser Notifications

Most browsers support the Web Push API standard. This API can be used on both desktop and mobile devices to allow notifications from websites and to receive those notifications even when a website is closed.

Web push notifications enable users to receive timely notifications about products, news, or messages without needing to install a native application or have a website browser open. They are a key part of recent efforts around Progressive Web Apps (PWAs), a technology that enables websites to utilize many features that were previously only available to installed applications.

OneSignals supports web push on all possible browsers.

Additional Resources

• Web Push Technical Spec
• OneSignal Web Push Overview
• OneSignal Web Push Quickstart
• OneSignal Web Push FAQ & Browser Support Matrix

Safari on iOS Push Notifications

Apple has recently launched beta support for Safari on iOS and iPadOS, now available for testing. Read our blog post to see how to implement and test mobile web push.

Additional Resources

• OneSignal blog post on iOS web push coming soon
• OneSignal Web Push FAQ & Browser Support Matrix

Tablets and Wearables

Amazon Fire Tablet Push Notifications

Amazon’s Kindle Fire tablets run a modified version of the Android operating system. This modified version has a different UI than typical Android devices. Amazon also uses its own notification system, called “Amazon Device Messaging” instead of Google’s messaging system.

Third-party applications for Amazon Fire Tablets are distributed through the Amazon App Store.

Fortunately, much of the code and experience for Amazon Fire Notifications is borrowed from the core of the Android operating system. For this reason, OneSignal’s Android SDK already includes support for Amazon Kindle Fire Tablets.

Kindle Fire notifications are delivered through the Amazon Device Messaging API.

OneSignal clients can follow our Amazon SDK Setup guide to implement Amazon Fire notifications.

Additional Resources:

• Amazon documentation on the Amazon Device Messaging (ADM) API
• OneSignal documentation on implementing Kindle Fire Notifications

Amazon Kindle E-Reader Push Notifications

Amazon Kindle E-Readers do not support third-party applications and do not include the concept of push notifications.

However, Amazon also has a different product line under the “Fire Tablet” branding that is a different type of device that supports both third-party applications and notifications.

Apple Watch Push Notifications (watchOS)

The Apple Watch supports two types of notifications. First, if the watch is paired with an iPhone and the iPhone is locked or asleep, notifications are displayed on the Apple Watch instead.

The notifications appear similar to how they would be shown on an iPhone or iPad, but they are reformatted to fit on the much smaller Apple Watch screen. Users can interact with the notifications, including replying to text messages or changing notification preferences by long-tapping on a displayed notification.

Next, the Apple Watch also supports independent apps. These are applications that can run on the watch without requiring an iPhone to be nearby.

Independent apps for watchOS can also generate notifications using the same framework as iOS applications. However, the notification setup steps are slightly different.

Due to limited demand, OneSignal does not currently provide a first-party SDK for independent apps on watchOS. However, with some modifications to the existing OneSignal iOS SDK, it is possible to use OneSignal to send notifications to independent apps.

More information can be found in this GitHub issue.

Additional Resources

• Apple overview of Watch Notifications
• OneSignal Github request form for Standalone Watch App Notifications

Android Wear Push Notifications (Wear OS)

Similar to iOS, Android automatically bridges notifications from Android phones to Android Wear devices. The layout of notifications is changed to fit the smaller screen and boundaries of the device.

Like Apple’s watchOS, Wear OS also supports creating standalone apps.

The APIs to generate Wear OS standalone notifications closely match the APIs for Android notifications, so little additional work is required.

Android Wear OS also supports a feature called Bridging, which can be used to de-duplicate notifications when a user has both an Android app and a standalone WearOS app installed from the same developer.  

OneSignal’s Android SDK natively supports all types of Wear OS notifications.

Additional Resources

• Google Android documentation on Wear OS notifications
• Google Android documentation on notification bridging
• OneSignal Android SDK setup guide

Fitbit notifications (Fitbit OS)

Depending on the Fitbit device, the notification experience will differ. Newer Fitbit devices support mirroring notifications from the apps that the user chooses, while older devices typically only support notifications for calls and texts.

The notifications are synchronized over Bluetooth, so the user’s smartphone must be nearby.

Fitbit also supports creating third-party apps and clock faces. However, at the time of writing this article, third-party apps do not have a way to display notifications.

Additional Resources

• Fitbit SDK documentation

Vehicles

Apple CarPlay Push Notifications

Similar to the Apple Watch, Apple Auto will mirror notifications that are sent to a user’s paired iOS device. However, CarPlay will only show notifications for apps with CarPlay support. This helps prevent distracting notifications from non-driving and non-messaging-related apps on the road.

Users can ask Siri to read the content of messages that they get while in CarPlay. They can also tap on the notification to launch the associated CarPlay app.

When building a CarPlay app, developers must request the .carPlay authorization from their app code. Once notification permission is granted, notifications sent to the app will be mirrored in the CarPlay screen.

CarPlay does not support standalone apps, so the only way to show notifications is to have them mirrored from an iOS app with CarPlay support.

Additional Resources

• Apple Carplay Developer Information

Android Auto Push Notifications (Android Automotive OS)

In order to minimize distractions, Android Auto supports a limited subset of Android notification features.

Android Auto notifications do not allow complex controls, such as tapping to expand a notification, or long-pressing a notification for additional options. Car manufacturers can also further restrict the functionality of notifications, based on screen size or safety.

Developers can implement Android Auto notifications using the same APIs as they would use for standard Android notifications.

OneSignal includes support for Android Auto notifications. For assistance implementing the OneSignal SDK in an Android Auto app, please reach out to our support team at support@onesignal.com.

Additional Resources

• Android Automotive OS Car Notifications Example
• OneSignal Android SDK Setup Documentation
  

Tesla Push Notifications

Tesla vehicles do not support third-party applications. Tesla’s in-car display also does not mirror notifications from smartphones. However, Tesla vehicles will notify users of incoming calls. They also support showing a pop-up for SMS messages and users can reply using the in-car text to speech functionality.

Voice Assistants

Amazon Echo Notifications (Amazon Alexa)

Amazon Echo devices support several types of push notifications, and notifications can be sent by third-party apps.

If the device has a screen, then a text version of the notification is shown. Otherwise, the Echo device will show a yellow indicator indicating the presence of new notifications, and the user must ask Alexa to read them.

To send Echo notifications, developers must create an Alexa Skill. Skills can be installed through the Alexa App on a user’s smartphone. Users can also install Skills through Alexa voice commands. Once a Skill is installed, it can interact with Amazon’s API to send notifications to a user.

Additional Resources

• Amazon’s overview of Amazon Device Messaging (ADM)

Google Home & Google Nest Hub Push Notifications

Google offers a wide range of smart home devices. Older devices are under the Google Home brand, while newer ones use the Nest moniker. They include smart speakers, as well as displays, thermostats, Wi-Fi routers, and more.

Google Home and Google Nest devices often include Google Assistant, which is a voice-controlled personal assistant.

Google Assistant voice-enabled devices under either the Google Home and Google Nest monikers do not support push notifications. However, third-party apps created for Google Assistant can be installed through the voice interface, and can then deliver notifications that will show up on a user’s smartphone. If the user is on an Android smartphone, the notification will arrive from the built-in Google Assistant app. If the user is on an iOS device, they must first install the Google Assistant iOS application.

Although Google Nest Hub devices have a screen, they do not support displaying third-party notifications.

Additional Resources

• Google Assistant Notification Developer Guide
  

Social Networks, Chat, and Gaming Platforms

Facebook Notifications

For many years, Facebook has supported application-to-user notifications that are shown in the Facebook web UI and in the Facebook mobile application.

The APIs and restrictions on this notification capability frequently change, with Facebook more recently implementing strict requirements for what kinds of third-party applications can send notifications.

Presently, only games that use “Facebook Login for Gaming” may send notifications in this interface. Non-game apps may not use these APIs.

Players must use their Facebook Login to be able to receive notifications and Facebook imposes strict rules on the frequency and quality of notifications sent. No more than five notifications may be sent to a user between sessions and apps may be penalized and unable to send notifications if they send too many messages to inactive users or have a low engagement rate.

Based on recent trends and privacy concerns, it’s unclear whether Facebook will continue to offer this functionality over the coming years.

Additional Resources

• Facebook Developer Documentation for App-to-User Notifications

Instagram Notifications

Instagram provides APIs for businesses to send messages to users, but it is designed as a way to help businesses manage direct messages at scale, not as a notification platform. Instagram places several restrictions on this API, including a requirement that there is an escalation path to a human agent. No other notification APIs are available for third-party applications.

Additional Resources

• Facebook Messenger API for Instagram Overview

Facebook Messenger Notifications

Facebook messenger provides a platform for third-party applications to partially or fully automate conversations.

To use this feature, the third-party application must create a Facebook page and get users' permission to send them Facebook messages. Facebook also imposes rate limits on pages that send too many messages or send messages too quickly.

Additional Resources

• Facebook’s developer documentation for Messenger.

WhatsApp Notifications (Business API)

Facebook’s WhatsApp Business API can be used by medium and large companies to communicate with their customers.

The WhatsApp Business API requires developers to provide pre-approved templates and to get user-opt in. WhatsApp also charges for messages sent, at rates ranging from about $0.005 USD per message, up to $0.08 USD per message.

To use this API, businesses must submit to a verification process and must be approved by Facebook in order to send messages.

Additional Resources

• Facebook WhatsApp Business API Documentation

WeChat Notifications (Weixin Open Platform Notifications)

WeChat provides APIs that can be used both by third-party WeChat Mini Programs (apps that run inside of the WeChat app) or by external apps distributed on iOS or Android devices.

WeChat provides the ability for official accounts to send notifications to their subscribers, notifying them of the availability of a Mini Program, or notify them about updates to the Program. Mini Programs can contain content including promotions or customer support.

Additional Resources

• WeChat Developer Documentation for Messaging

Steam Push Notifications

Steam, a digital game distribution service specializing in desktop games for PCs and Macs, provides a native API for game notifications. This system is used for delivering notifications to users for games that provide asynchronous multiplayer features. Usage for other purposes is not permitted.

Steam may also automatically send notifications to promote a game. For example, they may send a price drop notification to users that have added the game in question to their wishlist.

Additional Resources

• SteamWorks Documentation for Game Notifications

Smart TV Devices

Roku Notifications

Roku supports the creation of third-party “Channels” to provide users access to different types of streaming content. However, Channels do not have a way of generating notifications.

Additional Resources

• Roku’s Developer Documentation

Chromecast Push Notifications

Google’s Chromecast provides an easy way for users to mirror content from their laptop or smartphone. It does not have a notification center and does not support third-party applications. Chromecast support is often built-in to Smart TVs. Chromecast devices are often bundled with Google TV.

Additional Resources

• Documentation for implementing Chromecast support into an app

Google TV Push Notifications (Android TV)

Google TV, previously called Android TV, is a popular Smart TV operating system. The operating system is available via external hardware devices (“Chromecast with Google TV”), or it comes pre-installed with some popular TV sets. Google TV is also available as an Android application.

Google TV supports creating third-party applications using Android development tools. Existing Android apps can also be ported to Google TV.

Google TV does not have a notification center. Therefore, third-party applications can't show notifications as they would on an Android phone or tablet.

Instead, applications can use the Recommendations Channel and Watch Next Channel to promote content.

Additional Resources

• Google TV Developer Documentation for Content Discovery

Apple TV Push Notifications (tvOS)

AppleTV refers to both an iOS application, subscription service, and a hardware device running tvOS that can be connected to a TV. In this section, we’ll focus on the tvOS hardware device.

Newer tvOS devices can show notifications, but they are limited to Homekit camera events or similar. Non-HomeKit pop-up notifications are not supported.

tvOS also supports two other types of notifications: Badges and Content-available notifications.

Badges are used to display a counter on an app icon, such as to indicate a new episode of a show. Content-available notifications can be used to run background code, such as to download sports scores or a list of show names so that they are ready when a user next launches the tvOS app.

Additional Resources

• Apple developer documentation for the UserNotifications framework
• OneSignal Github issue & guide for tvOS support

Amazon Fire TV

Amazon Fire TV has the best notification capability of any Smart TV device or operating system.

Amazon Fire TV is built on top of the Android Operating System and supports most of the Android Notification API. Amazon encourages developers to utilize notifications in a wide variety of ways as they would on any other Android application.​​

Fire TV has three types of supported notifications:

• Heads-up Notifications - Floating windows that appear at the bottom of the screen. Users can interact with the notification to launch the third-party app connected to it. The notification will also be shown in the Fire TV notification center.
• Toasts - Small pop-ups that appear within an app but are not stored in the notification center.
• Standard Notifications - Appear in the Fire TV notification center.

Additional Resources

• Amazon Fire TV Notification setup tutorial
• OneSignal Amazon Platform Setup Guide

Samsung SmartTV Push Notifications

Samsung TVs run Tizen, an open-source operating system primarily developed by Samsung Electronics. Tizen supports a notification experience similar to Android devices and this extends to Samsung TVs.

To send and receive SmartTV notifications in their third-party app, developers need to implement Tizen’s libraries. OneSignal does not support Tizen or Samsung TV notifications at this time.

Additional Resources

• Samsung Tizen Push API Documentation

Gaming Consoles

Xbox Console Notifications

Microsoft’s Xbox consoles run a heavily customized version of Microsoft Windows, and many windows applications can be ported to the Xbox. Nevertheless, the Xbox does not permit applications or games to generate notifications.

However, the operating system does have features that allow games to highlight achievements, user-to-user messages, or game invitations. The Xbox notification center will show notifications for these types of events, but they cannot be customized by third-party developers.

Additional Resources

• Microsoft Xbox Developer Center

Playstation Notifications

Sony’s Playstation console does not permit games or applications from generating custom notifications. However, the operating system does have features that allow games to highlight achievements, messages from friends, or game invitations.

Additional Resources

• Sony Playstation Developer Center

Nintendo Switch Notifications

Nintendo’s Switch gaming console is perhaps the only gaming console that has a push-notification style capability.

Games like Ring Fit Adventure can set and trigger "alarm" notifications to be shown in the future. When the console is docked, the controller will vibrate, the Switch will beep, and the home button will light up to indicate that there is an alarm that was triggered.

As of 2021, no other games seem to make use of this functionality. Users can also set their own alarms in the user settings for their Switch.

Similar to other consoles, the Nintendo Switch also shows notifications for friend invitations, achievements, or completed game downloads.

Additional Resources

• Nintendo Developer Portal

Google Stadia Push Notifications

Google’s Stadia platform does not support third-party notifications. However, notifications are automatically shown for chats, new games, or friend requests.

Additional Resources

• Google Stadia Developer Portal

Reach Out to us for Device-Specific Support

Didn't find the answer you were looking for? In the messaging industry, change happens quickly. We're dedicated to keeping pace with the latest notification preferences, regulations, and technology. Reach out to us to learn more about how OneSignal works with specific devices or channels — or skip the conversation and start sending notifications for free today.

Over the last few years, web push notifications have gone from a new and little-known channel to one that is used by over 5% of all top websites.

Web push was designed to solve an important challenge: it helps users receive real-time messages from products that they use primarily through an online UI. For example, web push allows users to receive an event reminder from Google Calendar, get notified of a new direct message in Slack, or stay informed about a breaking local news story.

Web push provides a real-time protocol that websites can use to obtain user consent for these messages and allows websites to send messages in real-time without requiring the user to install an app. Unlike channels like SMS or email, web push has a standardized opt-in and opt-out mechanism, thereby preventing spam and better highlighting the messages that users want to receive.

Best of all, web push notifications cost nothing to send. This is a crucial differentiator for businesses that may pay thousands of dollars to send SMS or WhatsApp messages.

Despite the value and affordability of web push notifications, there has been a major obstacle to wider adoption: the lack of web push support on Apple iOS mobile devices like the iPhone and iPad. To send push notifications on iOS devices, users are currently required to install an app from the iOS App Store and enable mobile push notifications on their devices. But in January of 2022, Apple announced plans to provide more widespread support for web push in 2023.

Now, those plans are finally coming to fruition. Today, Apple announced the availability of iOS and iPadOS Web Push support in iOS 16.4 Beta.

With this announcement, web push is now supported on all major desktop and mobile platforms, including Android, iOS, macOS, Windows, and Linux. It's also supported by all major browsers, including Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Edge, Brave, and Opera.

The widespread support of web push makes it an even more valuable and standardized channel for websites to communicate with their users. It only needs to be implemented once, and it will work smoothly across all browsers and operating systems.

The one caveat to Apple's implementation is that it requires the website to be added to the home screen. This is a relatively simple process that can be done from the share screen. Your website must be served with a web application manifest file to be added as a Home Screen web app. Otherwise, it will be saved as a Home Screen bookmark, which opens in the browser. If your site is already a Progressive Web App (PWA), no additional updates are needed.

Once this is complete, the website can prompt the user to grant push notification permission. The user can then manage those permissions per website in their Notification Settings, similar to apps that they have installed.

Notifications sent from websites will work exactly like those from apps. This means that they will be shown in the iOS Notification Center and other devices like the Apple Watch.

How Web Apps can Implement Web Push Notifications

While easy for end-users, the technical elements of implementing web push and techniques for maximizing opt-in rate can be somewhat complicated. To help with this, OneSignal offers both free and paid plans that streamline the process of adding and sending web push notifications. In addition, we provide tools to maximize opt-in rate, automate messages, collect analytics, and centralize multiple messaging channels like email, SMS, and web push within a single platform. Our team is following this Apple release closely and will ensure that our users are prepared to leverage web push on iOS as it becomes available.

Learn more about mobile web push requirements and how to ensure your website is ready to leverage iOS web push.

As the holidays approach and we head into a new year, I’m often inspired to reflect on OneSignal’s growth and the amazing community of employees and users that has fueled our evolution. What began as a small mobile gaming studio eight years ago has flourished into a globally-renowned customer messaging and engagement solution that’s trusted by millions of users. It’s impossible to tell that story without recognizing the countless individuals who helped make OneSignal who we are — including the customers who choose to put their faith in us every day.

I’m both grateful and proud of how far we’ve come as a company and the amazing things we’ve built together. This past year, we launched our omnichannel Journeys messaging workflow builder, enhanced our user dashboard and email capabilities, launched new integrations, introduced support for iOS Live Activities, and much more.  As I look ahead to 2023, I’m also excited about our plans to enhance our product to better support the growth and success of yours.

Every family has their own holiday traditions. At OneSignal, one of our traditions is to use our holiday budget to make a donation on behalf of our customers. We do so as a small token of our gratitude and a way to pay homage to our belief that every good idea requires support to thrive.

This year, we decided to donate to Doctors Without Borders, a nonprofit organization that’s committed to delivering medical humanitarian aid to people in crisis throughout the world. Doctors Without Borders has been instrumental in responding to the COVID-19 pandemic and has worked tirelessly to ameliorate the cascading impact that the pandemic has had on other essential health services. Beyond providing COVID relief, their volunteers often put their own safety at risk to provide care in war zones, in the wake of natural disasters, at the center of disease outbreaks, and in countless other crises worldwide. We have tremendous respect for their work, grit, and sacrifice.

Thank you so much for your continued support and for making this holiday tradition possible. We are so happy you’ve chosen to take this journey with us.

Wishing you a happy and healthy holiday and a rewarding 2023!

OneSignal was born from our experiences running a Y Combinator-backed mobile game studio. From the beginning, we set out to help all marketers and developers from around the world easily send effective messages to their customers.

Prior to starting OneSignal, our personal experience building mobile applications revealed that the status quo of customer engagement was broken. We found ourselves spamming our users with the same, non-personalized push notifications, with no ability to segment, personalize, or understand the efficacy of our campaigns. Before sending an email, we had to upload multiple CSV lists to clunky email platforms. All this effort took precious time away from our ability to improve our games, and it harmed our relationship with our players.

With OneSignal, we’ve led a technology transformation that has helped over a million businesses better engage with their customers. Today, over one in seven mobile applications use OneSignal to effectively engage with their users across channels, including push notifications, email, SMS, and in-app messaging.

We’ve made it incredibly simple to send messages on each channel, and we’ve brought the channels under a single platform so that businesses can easily orchestrate omnichannel experiences that delight their users.

Today, I’m thrilled to share that we’ve secured an additional $50 Million in Series C funding to accelerate our product roadmap and better serve our customers. We’ve partnered with world-class investors from BAM Elevate, who led the round, with additional financial support from existing investors, including SignalFire and Zach Coelius.

The round’s proceeds will be used to enhance our omnichannel messaging and orchestration capabilities. In particular, we’re excited to continue work on our Journeys workflow tool to make it even easier to automate and personalize omnichannel messaging at scale. We’ll also continue to develop our best-in-class email messaging capabilities and expand our analytics tools to provide customers with even more granular insights.

OneSignal is a globally used product. We will continue to expand our geographic footprint to better serve clients in Europe, Asia-Pacific, and Latin America, with global office locations in London and Singapore.

Welcoming a New OneSignal Board Member

In conjunction with this funding round, we’re happy to welcome Jamie McGurk, COO at BAM Elevate, to our Board of Directors. McGurk brings over 20 years of operating and investing experience to the OneSignal board. Before joining BAM Elevate, he was a Managing Partner at Coatue Management and spent seven years as an Operating Partner at Andreessen Horowitz. As an Operating Partner, he built out Andreessen Horowitz’s Corporate Development Operating Team, helped raise more than $20 billion in financing, and secured over $20 billion in M&A transaction value for various portfolio companies.

Thank you for your support!

Over 1.7 million marketers and developers have now signed up to use the OneSignal platform, and we appreciate every one of you. Your feedback has been instrumental to our journey so far, and we’re committed to supporting your success as the world’s most accessible and most powerful customer engagement platform.

About OneSignal

OneSignal is designed to help businesses send notifications and seamlessly manage user communication across every channel, including mobile push notifications, web push notifications, bulk SMS, in-app messaging, and email. Our platform is quick to set up and makes it easy to customize and automate customer messaging without doing any development work. As the world’s leading notification provider, we’re proud to support 500,000 mobile applications — nearly 15 percent of all apps today. Our product is favored across the world by companies including Zynga, USA Today, Bitcoin.com, Upwork, Tribune, and more.

As always, we remain committed to providing an exceptional free product and additional subscription plans to fit every company size and type. We’re grateful for the ongoing support of our user base and look forward to accelerating their growth and making their jobs even easier.

There’s a reason why we’ve earned the trust of so many companies around the world — sign up for a free account today to see for yourself.

On January 27, 2022, Apple seeded the first Beta launch of iOS 15.4, featuring several updates— including one that we've been looking forward to for a long time.

iOS 15.4 is expected to introduce many new features, including support for Face ID with a Mask, new emojis, and updates to built-in apps such as Notes and AppleTV.

However, the most exciting addition is experimental support for iOS web push notifications!

Web push notifications are a popular communication channel used by more than 8% of top websites. They provide an essential mechanism for websites to send timely and personalized messages to users.

Nearly every operating system supports this valuable communication channel. Unfortunately, until recently, Apple was a significant outlier and showed little interest in allowing web push on iOS devices. In the past, Apple has faced pushback for falling behind on supporting modern web APIs, web push included.

Considering that Apple owns 52% of the mobile market in the United States and a similarly large market share worldwide, this limitation has dramatically slowed the adoption and utility of web push notifications. As a result, websites have resorted to pressuring users to download apps or provide either an email or SMS number to receive messages.

This latest addition to iOS 15.4 Beta is a promising sign that Apple will finally enable web push support in Safari on iOS and as well as in other iOS browsers such as Chrome and Firefox.

In our tests of this new Beta capability in iOS 15.4, we've determined that web push is disabled by default, and unfortunately, enabling it does not yet work. However, the introduction of this new option and the newly introduced iOS web push APIs are strong signs that Apple is actively working on rolling out full web push support.

Although the public launch of iOS 15.4 is slated for April 2022, web push support likely won't be available until later, possibly in iOS 16. If this prediction is correct, we'll see iOS web push introduced with the public launch of iOS 16 in September 2022.

That might be a while to wait, but nonetheless we're incredibly excited for the opportunities this will unlock for better and more user-friendly mobile web experiences. The OneSignal team is following this news closely and will ensure that all OneSignal customers are prepared to seamlessly leverage web push on iOS when it's available.

Get Started with OneSignal

OneSignal is designed to help you send notifications and seamlessly manage your user communication across a variety of channels, including mobile push notifications, web push notifications, bulk SMS, in-app messaging, and email. Our platform is quick to set up and makes it easy to send eye-catching messages without doing any development work. If you don't have a OneSignal account, you can create one for free and start sending push notifications to your users today. Don't take our word for it — simply sign up and see for yourself!

As we close out an eventful and challenging 2021, we’re amazed and humbled by the growing OneSignal community. Over 1.4 million of you now trust OneSignal to power your customer communications and we don’t take that lightly. Your connection to your customers is invaluable and we’re honored to be a part of building your business with you.

Whether you use our mobile or web push, in-app messaging, email, SMS, or all of the above, we know you’ve been busy. You're collectively sending more than 10 billion messages per day through OneSignal.

My co-founder, Long Vo, and I started OneSignal to empower our customers of all sizes to reach their goals, and the spirit of our company is to enable those around us with tools for success. That's why this year, we've chosen to use our holiday budget to make a donation on behalf of our customers to Girls Who Code. Girls Who Code is a global organization on a mission to close the gender gap in technology and to change the image of what a programmer looks like and does. As the most developer-friendly platform out there, this is a mission we can get behind.

Thank you, our customers, for the support that makes donations like this possible. Thank you for being a part of our journey as a company and for letting us be a part of yours.

Happy holidays!

We were busy this year — check out the article below to learn what we were up to in 2021.

Web push is now an increasingly mature channel, with over 10 percent of all top websites having adopted this powerful technology to engage with their users.

Nevertheless, Apple still lags behind other browsers and operating systems and does not yet support web notifications on iOS.

Over the years, we at OneSignal have continued to follow trends in the evolution of web push, and in 2020 we shared our previous predictions on when Apple would introduce support for this valuable channel on the iPhone.

Who is Using it?

Web push has continued to expand as a channel in both its adoption and in its capabilities. Today, hundreds of thousands of websites and progressive web apps use this channel to notify users about new messages, upcoming calendar events, or new products that have come on sale. Browsers such as Chrome and Firefox have also taken measures to reduce notification spam, making web push a trusted and reliable channel for millions of people worldwide. Google Chrome also supports web push notifications on Android devices.

OneSignal has helped developers adapt to these changes by providing user-friendly and easily customizable ways to request web push notification permission.

The Current State of iOS Web Push

The demand from developers and marketers for Apple to introduce web push on iOS and in Mobile Safari has only grown over time. Over 110 people are following the feature request in Apple’s Bug Tracker for the Webkit Browser Engine, which powers Mobile Safari and all other browsers on iOS including Chrome and Firefox for iOS. There’s also a petition that has been signed by over 6,000 developers and marketers asking Apple to implement web push notifications on iOS devices.

It is unclear if and when Apple will implement support for web push for iOS, but we continue to be optimistic for change.

In a recent lawsuit filed against Apple by Epic Games, Apple CEO Tim Cook suggested that the web offers a viable alternative distribution channel to the iOS App Store. This statement was met with skepticism from those who have been unable to use features like push notifications for their websites on iOS.

In his rebuttal of Apple’s defense, Alex Russell, Partner Program Manager for Microsoft’s Edge Browser and former Googler who has played an influential role in advocating for web standards, shared that “Safari has been falling further and further behind in implementing web APIs, which make specific technical features available to developers. Safari is now something like 1000 APIs behind Chrome, double the gap measured in 2016, and 300 or so behind Firefox.” Russell specifically called out Push Notifications as one of the largest missing APIs in mobile Safari.

In the wake of these recent proceedings, we believe that Apple intends to credibly claim that the web can be used for app distribution, and thus they are more likely to begin introducing features that developers like Russell are demanding.

Unfortunately, the timing for when Apple will actually introduce iOS web push support is still uncertain. Our hope is that increasing pressure from developers will have an impact in convincing Apple to devote more of their focus to supporting modern web platform features including push notifications.

What Businesses Should Know

Businesses and developers who are considering using Web Push shouldn’t let the lack of iOS support stop them. Web Push is supported on nearly every other browser, including Chrome, Firefox, Microsoft Edge, and even Safari for macOS.

To reach iOS users, businesses can choose to build a mobile application and send mobile push notifications or leverage other channels like SMS or Email as an alternative. OneSignal offers all of these channels under a single platform, so developers can make sure they’re reaching their audience on the best channel possible.

Notification Capabilities & Limitations by Device

To learn more about what popular devices currently support push notifications and other communication channels, check our comprehensive article on the State of Notification Support Across Popular Devices in 2021.

Send Push Notifications with OneSignal

OneSignal is designed to help you send notifications and seamlessly manage your user communication across every channel, including mobile push notifications, web push notifications, bulk SMS, in-app messaging, and email. Our platform is quick to set up and makes it easy to customize and automate your messaging strategy across the web, iOS, Android, and other devices without doing any development work. If you don't have a OneSignal account, you can create one for free and start sending push notifications today. Don't take our word for it — sign up and see for yourself!

Google continues to evolve Android to be more visually appealing, easier to use, faster, and more secure. A new version of the Android operating system is released each year and typically incorporates a variety of changes, including ones that affect the notification experience.

Android 12 is no different — Google is once again making several changes that will affect how developers can best reach their users with push notifications. Here’s what to expect.

1. “Custom Notification” Changes

Custom Notifications refer to notifications that use a non-standard layout. Android provides a standard template for most types of notifications, but this standard template may not meet the needs of every app.

Custom notifications are a tricky feature for applications to use correctly because they must be designed to accommodate a wide range of device orientations and resolutions.

Android 12 will introduce major changes to how applications can use custom notifications. Complete customization of the notification design is no longer possible. Instead, custom notification content is limited to a customizable area within a standard notification template.

Google explains “In this way, Android 12 makes all notifications visually consistent and easy to scan, with a discoverable, familiar notification expansion for users.”

Although this change takes away some of the customizations that were previously possible, it helps provide a better overall user experience for Android users.

Google’s advises: “If your app is using fully custom notifications, we recommend testing with the new template as soon as possible”
More detail on this change is available here.

2. Notification UX Changes

Android 12 introduces several changes to the look and feel of notifications, which can be seen in the following comparison screenshots:

In the examples above, the top two notifications on each device are native app notification. The third notification on each device is a web push notification from the Chrome browser.

At a glance, Google has made several changes to increase whitespace around notification elements and reduce visual clutter. They’ve also softened the colors, making notifications more visually appealing. Finally, collapsed notifications take up less vertical space, and expanded notifications take up slightly more vertical space. This helps users both see more notifications at once and provides an opportunity to view greater notification detail when users expand a notification.

Another important change is that the amount of visible content in web push notifications has been shortened. It’s possible that Google will be making further changes here to increase how much text can be shown, but we still recommend that developers be mindful of not making their web push notification content too long, especially when using an image.

3. Faster, More Responsive Notifications

Android users may be familiar with cases where they click a notification but then nothing happens for a few seconds. The reason for this is that some apps use  “notification trampolines”. For developers reading this, that means that they launch an intermediary broadcast receiver or service before starting the app activity itself. When using this technique, bugs in developer code can sometimes cause long delays before an app launches.

As of Android 12, Google is asking developers to migrate away from this pattern and will no longer allow it. A surprising number of applications used notification trampolining as a way to run business logic when users engaged with notifications, including many of Google’s own apps.

When Android 12 is released, older applications that still use trampolining will continue to work but a warning may be shown when users tap a notification. New applications that target Android 12 will not be permitted to use this technique and will need to update how their app handles notification events in order for their app to continue working properly.

If you’re a OneSignal user, please make sure to upgrade to our latest SDK version (4.0.0 or newer) to avoid running into any issues with trampolining. This latest SDK version improves the way the app activity is started from a notification and also simplifies the process of setting up and using the OneSignal SDK.

Android 12 is expected to be released in September 2021

Assuming Google sticks to its usual schedule, we can expect to see the official stable release of Android 12 in September 2021.

Android 12 also includes many other changes unrelated to notifications, such as improvements to security, performance, network connectivity, and more. Developers can get details on the other changes on Google’s Android 12 Behavior Changes documentation.

We’re excited to see what other features and improvements Google is working on as we get close to this release date.

Get Started with OneSignal

OneSignal is designed to help you send notifications and seamlessly manage your user communication across every channel, including mobile push notifications, web push notifications, bulk SMS, in-app messaging, and email. Our platform is quick to set up and makes it easy to customize and automate your messaging strategy across Android, iOS, and other devices without doing any development work. If you don't have a OneSignal account, you can create one for free and start sending push notifications to your users today.

In December of 2020, Apple announced plans to make opt-in permission mandatory for Identifier for Advertisers (IDFA) tracking, sending shock waves through the nearly $80 billion mobile marketing industry. The announcement was part of a larger privacy policy overhaul that was scheduled to go into effect with the new iOS 14 release in September of 2020, but was stalled until early 2021 to allow advertisers and developers a grace period to prepare.

Prior to this announcement, Apple’s randomly assigned IDFA and its Android counterpart, Google Advertiser Identification (GAID), were the basis of many user tracking and ad targeting technologies.

Today, Apple’s AppTrackingTransparency framework has yet to take full effect, but rumors have resurfaced as the grace period comes to an end. The updated app privacy policy is forecasted to reduce IDFA user tracking to somewhere between zero and 20 percent — a drastic change that will financially impact ad-centric analytics SDKs that fuel networks such as Google Ads and Facebook Ads.

Responses & Rumors

In the ensuing months since Apple’s announcement, a lot of attention has been paid to the ripple effects of Apple’s decision and the mounting tension between some of Silicon Valley’s most powerful companies.

Facebook’s Audience Network, which relies on IDFA to serve up personalized ads in third-party mobile apps, expects developer revenue to drop as much as 50 percent. In August, Facebook confirmed that they would comply with the IDFA policy change in apps on iOS 14 devices, but also publicly condemned Apple for forcing them to reevaluate the viability of the product. In a blog post outlining the change, they revealed that Apple’s policy change could “render Audience Network so ineffective on iOS 14 that it may not make sense to offer it on iOS 14 in the future.”

More recently, Apple and Google announced yet another ban preventing developers from using the location tracking SDK known as X-Mode Social. This new development, coupled with the drama of previous months, has given rise to further speculation that Apple will completely ban certain “free” analytics SDKs such as Facebook Analytics, Firebase, and Flurry Analytics.

Although the SDKs are free for app developers to use, the companies that provide these SDKs leverage data collected by the SDKs as a way to track users and improve the personalization of their advertising products.

Implications & More Speculation

It’s inevitable that Apple will continue to take technical and policy measures to prevent user tracking across apps from SDKs like Firebase, Flurry, and the Facebook Analytics SDK. However, these measures don’t impact other SDKs without an advertising component — and that’s not likely to change.

Although Apple’s privacy policy will inevitably hurt advertisers and developers who monetized through products such as Facebook Audience Network, the impact to Facebook and Google will be softened by their continued ability to collect data from and personalize ads in their first-party products like Instagram or Google Search. That said, the tension between Facebook, Apple, and Google has ignited new debates about the boundaries between protecting user privacy and actively undermining your competition.

Companies that provide free SDKs that previously tracked users by their IDFA are already making updates to remove tracking and ensure compliance with Apple’s new policy. But these modifications also mean that these companies' main motivations for providing a free SDK — namely, to track users — will also disappear. Although rumors that Apple will completely ban these SDKs are unlikely to come to fruition, it raises questions about whether popular SDKs such as Firebase and Flurry Analytics will continue to be supported and offered for free after their user tracking features are removed.

What do Apple’s policy changes mean for OneSignal?

In an industry where success is contingent on your ability to forecast and build for the future, rumors are worth discussing and responding to. OneSignal is fully compliant with Apple’s privacy policy and supports the spirit behind these changes them. Unlike some other “free” SDKs, the data collected by OneSignal's SDKs is fully owned by the app developer and is never shared with data brokers or advertisers. You can find a comprehensive list of the data tracked by our SDK here.

Like Apple, we’re committed to giving you more control and empowering both developers and end users to make informed decisions. OneSignal offers a free product to demonstrate the value of our service, and not to track users like some other free SDKs. We also offer paid plans to support companies at every growth stage.

To make sure you’re up to speed with Apple’s latest app privacy requirements, check out our compliance resources.

It’s been quite a year. Although it’s been challenging, we’ve been so impressed by the ingenuity and resilience of our OneSignal community. Thank you for your support, thank you for your feedback, and thank you for your passion for our product. We’re humbled by our continuously growing and engaged community.

As a sign of gratitude from the OneSignal team, we’ve chosen to use our 2020 holiday budget to make donations on behalf of our customers and partners to two deserving organizations: Feeding America and Lonely Whale.

FeedingAmerica.org

Food insecurity has spiked globally during the COVID pandemic, with up to 50 million people potentially facing hunger in the U.S. alone this year, including more than 17 million children. The Feeding America network is the United States’ largest domestic hunger-relief organization, working to reach those in need and end hunger.

Lonely Whale

The fight to protect our global environment continues despite the pandemic. Lonely Whale is a leading non-profit dedicated to stemming the flow of plastics into the ocean. The organization works with individuals, charities, corporate partners, influencers, and the NextWave Plastics consortium to accomplish a wide range of initiatives, all with the simple goal of keeping plastic out of the ocean.

We also want to take this chance to thank you for your ongoing support that makes donations like these possible. This is just a small sign of our appreciation for our vibrant and growing OneSignal community, and we will continue to work hard to expand and improve our product for you (Check out our Top 10 Product Updates of 2020). Thank you all for your continued support and happy holidays!

OneSignal’s origin was a small mobile game studio I started in 2011 with my cofounder, Long Vo. We built push notifications in-house because the publicly available options were mediocre and expensive. After a while, we realized that the technology we built and the best-practices we learned for push notifications were something we wanted to share with the world. Too many developers have struggled to send reliable, relevant, or effective messages to their users, and the industry was overdue for a good solution.

Just a few years after that pivot, we’ve achieved a level of scale that Long and I never imagined. Every day, we deliver over 8 billion messages, and nearly 1 million apps and websites have implemented OneSignal to re-engage their users better.

Our vision is to empower great ideas to scale by enabling companies of all sizes to more easily re-engage their users. To better achieve this, we’ve always provided a fantastic free version of our product to help customers get started.

Over the past few years, our product has improved at a breakneck pace. In the last six months, we’ve nearly doubled the size of our engineering team. And in the previous 12 months, we’ve added In-App Messaging, Email Automation, Advanced Analytics, and we will soon launch support for SMS. In each case, these product additions have come with free versions for users to try them out and understand their value before they upgrade to a paid plan.

I’m excited to announce that we’re now rolling out a new pricing tier that starts at just $19 per month. This lower-priced plan has been one of the top requests from our users, and it makes it easier for anyone to use OneSignal’s advanced features, even with a smaller budget.

Along with introducing this lower-priced plan, we’re updating some of our pricing tiers to make them easier to understand and better suited to our variety of product offerings. We are also adjusting some of the limits between our free plan and other pricing tiers.

For most of our users, these updates will make it much more affordable to start using OneSignal’s more advanced features. They will also help us grow our business to continue to provide world-class service to developers and companies around the world.

If you’re not yet using the product, get started for free today to see how easy it is to increase your user engagement and drive a 10%+ revenue increase. If you’re a OneSignal user, thank you for being part of the community, we appreciate your contributions to making the product better.  

Apple had one of their biggest WWDC keynotes ever, lasting nearly two hours and featuring announcements that will affect every Mac and Mobile developer in the world.

Many of these changes will have a huge impact on how businesses around the world think about engaging with their users through push notifications and related software experiences.

Here's a summary of the most impactful changes to push notifications and messaging on Apple platforms, and how developers and marketers can best stay ahead of the curve.

MacOS Web Push Notifications have been greatly improved!

MacOS Web Push notifications have previously had some tricky limitations. First, they couldn't be persisted on the screen. Next, including an image left only enough space for 4 or 5 words.

In macOS Big Sur (11.0), notifications can now have two lines of text. In addition, including an image no longer reduces the available space for text. Finally, the notification can be set to "require interaction" so that it remains on screen until the user clicks or dismisses it.

Users can even expand the notification by selecting an icon in the top right of the notification (visible on hover). Expanded notifications can include many different buttons which direct users to different websites or specific actions on a website.

Finally, notifications are also visible when a user is logged out.

iOS App Library

Historically, users would often uninstall apps simply to save clutter on their home screen. This problem will be resolved by Apple's new App Library feature.

App Library makes it easier for users to organize apps and to manage a large number of existing apps.

Most importantly, when users try to delete an app, iOS 14 encourages them to move it to their app library instead.

As users will be more likely to keep apps around, developers should be extra mindful about the notifications they send. A smart and well timed notification will increasingly be a great way to re-activate a user who has forgotten about your app in their App Library.

App Clips

App Clips are new, lightweight versions of mobile apps that allow users to perform everyday tasks without having to download your app.

App Clips can be installed from a Website, Visual Code, NFC tag, or even through Apple Maps.

App Clips also support notifications, making them an interesting new channel to re-engage users.

Apple Silicon and iOS+iPad apps on macOS

Apple has made a long-rumored announcement about their plan to move to ARM processors for future Macs. This will standardize the processor used between macOS and Apple's other devices like the iPhone and the iPad.

As part of this change, Apple will make all iOS apps available by default for download on macOS. Developers can opt-out of this until they're ready, but there's little doubt that a ton of iOS and iPad apps will start to become widely available for download on Mac computers.

Some of the foundational work for this change has already occurred with the introduction of macOS Catalyst last year. This includes support for iOS and iPadOS notification features including content extensions. Many of the other changes in Big Sur related to notifications appear intended to standardize the notification experience between iOS and macOS.

Support for notifications on local networks without internet connections through "Local Push Connectivity"

Apple now supports sending notifications to devices without a web connection, leveraging the local network instead. For example, this might be useful in environments like schools or ordering kiosks.

More details will be coming soon, but Apple has already published some example code for both an app and server to deliver push notifications over local connections.

Stay tuned to the OneSignal blog or our Twitter account @OneSignal for additional updates and best-practices on all the new features of iOS 14, macOS Big Sur, and more!

Android 11 will be released to the public in the coming months, and it comes with several changes that developers should be aware of in order to ensure a good user experience with their notifications.

The main change, demonstrated in the above gif, is that Android notifications can now be easily silenced when a user long-presses them. If the notification is a conversation as part of a messaging app, it can also be prioritized into the "Conversations" area.

When a user changes this setting, the change applies to all notifications from the app with the same Category as the notification the user has acted upon.

Many apps today only have one Android Notification Category, so if a user silences a notification from that app, all future notifications will be silenced as well.

As a result, it's now more important than ever for developers to use multiple Android Categories for each type of notification they send. OneSignal makes this easy with our server-side category editor. Developers can easily add, remove, or change Android Notification categories with this tool without having to release new versions of their app.

Multiple Categories helps provide users with the best experience when customizing notification preferences on their app. This helps to make sure your most important messages get through even if a user silences the less important ones.

You can also create notification Categories that are silent by default by modifying the "Importance" setting to "Medium" or "Low". This setting is recommended for less urgent or important messages.

Notification History

Android 11 includes an option to turn on Notification History. This option allows users to see old notifications that they may have swiped away within the last 24 hours.

When enabled, the Notification History can also be opened by selecting a "History" link in the device's notification shade. Notifications in the history view will not show any rich media, but this is still a useful way for users to make sure they don't lose an important message.

Do Not Disturb Preferences

Finally, users can now quickly configure which Categories of notifications should be allowed to break through their device's Do Not Disturb Settings. Again, this underscores why it's important for developers to leverage multiple Categories for their Android notifications.

Fortunately, OneSignal already supports all of the necessary capabilities for developers to best adapt and take advantage of these changes.

You can stay tuned to our blog or follow us on Twitter as we continue to watch for new updates to Android 11, iOS 14, and other operating system releases that may affect how devices handle push notifications.