How can I send silent / background notifications on iOS? – Pushy

Simply pass the content_available: true parameter in the Send Notifications API request body and omit the notification object to send a silent notification:

{
    "to": "a6345d0278adc55d3474f5",
    "data": {
        "silentPayloadData": "Hello World"
    },
    "content_available": true
}

Note: Silent notifications require the Background Modes -> Remote Notifications capability to be enabled in the Xcode project settings.

Additional Note: Due to Apple platform restrictions, silent notifications will not be delivered to your app if it has been swiped away from the recent apps / killed. If you'd like notifications to be received in this scenario, please consider sending regular (non-silent) iOS notifications, without the content_available: true flag.

Furthermore, Apple restricts the number of silent notifications you can send to a device in a given day to about 5. Sending too many to the same device in a single day, or sending them in quick succession, will lead to those notifications being throttled (and dropped) by APNs.

Sending a silent notification will silently invoke your pushy.setNotificationHandler() even when your app is in the background:

// Handle push notifications
pushy.setNotificationHandler({ (data, completionHandler) in
    // Print notification payload data
    print("Received notification: \(data)")

    // Consume your custom payload in the background silently
    if data["silentPayloadData"] {
       print("This is a silent notification")       
    }

    // Call this completion handler when you finish processing
    // the notification (after fetching background data, if applicable)
    completionHandler(UIBackgroundFetchResult.newData)
})

You may execute a network request at this time to fetch additional data, and afterwards, display a local notification if you wish.

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