Here's my case:
I have developed an app in Cordova which is basicly the mobile version of the client's website. But the app has as extra feature the ability to receive push notifications. All works fine as it should.
But the app got rejected due to
Your app provides a limited user experience as it is not sufficiently different from a mobile browsing experience
Side note: Few months back I made the same app for a different client but even without the push notifications, no problem. So I guess Apple has made their terms more strict.
Even Apple suggests to rather use a web app. So my big question is:
Is it possible to have a web app for iOS that also receives the push notifications?
I've been searching around the web for the past few days and I've read a lot of blogs and posts on the issue but most of them are almost over a year old.
Does any of you have more info on this or even have a better solution to the app rejection?
To whom it may concern:
This is still not possible (June 2017).
Related
I have been using pushbullet for months but something happened a week ago and I cannot get to send my pushes. Support has been horrendous.
So I decided to look for an alternative.
I ended up using Pusher which seems fairly promising and support is prompt.
Unfortunately, they don't seem to have an official application and, instead, aim towards a "build you own application to interact with your back-end server"
Which is great! Especially for Android, as APKs can be installed with no certificates without too much hassle.
iOS on the other end is tied to a $100+ fee to enroll as an Apple Dev and publish apps in their store.
Question:
Is there a reliable and easy push-notification service/software that I can install on my backend to be able to push a highly reliable and fast notification on my iOS device(s) via AN EXISTING APP (not MY app ... an existing official app, like pushbullet!).
Pushbullet was apparently having issues as everything came back.
It took a long time and was not advertised.
Does the iOS/iPadOS version of safari support push api standard with service worker?
EDIT: there is a petition you can sign to raise awareness on this topic
iOS don't support the W3C Spec web push notifications yet. But there is a Safari specific API for web notifications. Refer to this answer on multiple options you have.
https://stackoverflow.com/a/49803408/1057093
Update: Corrected the Answer in the above link to clarify proprietary solution is only for OS X - Safari and no solution for iOS Safari yet. Custom in app notification is the best we can do today for iOS Safari.
iOS 12, 13, and now iOS/iPadOS 14 still doesn't support these features:
Web Push Notification
Background Sync
Page Lifecycle
Service Workers on WebViews
Universal Links / Link Capturing
So many requests from the community for these features but Apple don't want to hear it. Maybe they think these features have a bigger chance to be unnecessary exploited(spam, etc). And also maybe they want to force developers to create the native application rather than the progressive web application.
I tested iOS 12 in beta last week and as Anand said, there is no change about this functionnality and more globally for Progressive Web App because the Web Manifest, in developpement at this moment is not implemented yet.
iOS 15.4 added a Push API feature in safari
Settings > Safari > Advanced > Experimental WebKitFeatures
but it is turned off by default.
That doesn't mean the Web Push Notification is fully supported in iOS but it is a hint that it might be coming soon.
Hopefully iOS 16 🤞
It still doesn't, but it was just announced that it's coming in 2023.
Source: https://webkit.org/blog/12824/news-from-wwdc-webkit-features-in-safari-16-beta/
(It's at the bottom of the "Web Push for macOS
" section)
I need to develop a progressive web app with push notifications integrated. Searching on the web I have found diverse opinions about this subject.
If I have understood correctly, for now, we cannot have push notifications in safari for mobile (but only for Desktop). Is it right?
Do you have any suggestions to obtain the same result (I am not an iOS expert)? I was wondering that maybe developing a native app only for push notifications purposes could be a good choice until push notification will be ready also for safari mobile.
P.S. I am developing the PWA using Angular 2.
Thank you for the support.
Unfortunately, based this post and also this the latest iOS version(13.3) still doesn't support some features of progressive web app:
Web Push Notification
Background Sync
Page Lifecycle
Service Workers on WebViews
Universal Links / Link Capturing
Until now, no news that says will be implemented on the next version 14. As I said in the old post, I think iOS doesn't want to support these in PWA because these features have a bigger chance to be unnecessary exploited(spam, etc). And also maybe they want to force developers to create the native application rather than the progressive web application.
I just want to let you know: Apple will support push notifications for web apps! This news was published at the WWDC2022. Apple will release Web Push with Safari 16 on macOS (Ventura) in a few months (2022) and for iOS and iPadOS in 2023.
See: https://webkit.org/blog/12945/meet-web-push/
Until this is working, I will use this Flutter wrapper thats embeds the PWA in a Webview.
I used to be a Web Developer and I'm not experienced at developing iOS Apps.
I've just found out that I can make the whole App a Mobile Website. So my question is if Apple accept these kind of Apps, where the whole content is a normal mobile friendly Website. As Apple can't control the content displayed in such an App.
There are three ways you can leverage your expertise as a web developer to develop iOS apps:
Use SFWebView or WKWebView and use it to present HTML (either stored or retrieved remotely) to the user. In this case your app would have to go through AppStore review. There's plenty of apps like these, so I would assume it would not be a huge issue.
Use a framework like React Native that compiles Javascript dialects into native UIKit. Again, the app would be up for review in the AppStore. It would feel more iOS-like to the users.
Develop a bona-fide web app that looks great on any phone and you skip the AppStore part.
I'm working as a web developer too and we did a few iOS apps for our clients. Basically 90% or more where pure web view and so far we didn't had problems getting through with them.
I'm going to use Apple's relaunched TestFlight service to distribute a beta, and I'd like to force a certain message to be visible when running as a beta.
Obviously there's a lot of ways to solve this, but it got me thinking; has Apple provided a way to detect if the currently running app was distributed via TestFlight? iOS clearly differentiates it to the user, so I thought there'd be a way for the developer to tell, as well. Alas, I haven't found anything in the Apple Developer site.