Receive messages in an iOS app

Once your client app is installed on a device, it can receive messages through the FCM APNs interface. You can immediately start sending notifications to user segments with the Notifications composer, or messages built on your application server.

Handle alert notifications

FCM delivers all messages targeting iOS through APNs. To learn more about receiving APNs notifications via UNUserNotificationCenter, see Apple's documentation on Handling Notifications and Notification-Related Actions.

In iOS 10 and above, you must set the UNUserNotificationCenter delegate and implement the appropriate delegate methods to receive display notifications from FCM.

Swift

@available(iOS 10, *)
extension AppDelegate: UNUserNotificationCenterDelegate {
  // Receive displayed notifications for iOS 10 devices.
  func userNotificationCenter(_ center: UNUserNotificationCenter,
                              willPresent notification: UNNotification,
                              withCompletionHandler completionHandler: @escaping (UNNotificationPresentationOptions)
                                -> Void) {
    let userInfo = notification.request.content.userInfo

    // With swizzling disabled you must let Messaging know about the message, for Analytics
    // Messaging.messaging().appDidReceiveMessage(userInfo)

    // ...

    // Print full message.
    print(userInfo)

    // Change this to your preferred presentation option
    completionHandler([[.alert, .sound]])
  }

  func userNotificationCenter(_ center: UNUserNotificationCenter,
                              didReceive response: UNNotificationResponse,
                              withCompletionHandler completionHandler: @escaping () -> Void) {
    let userInfo = response.notification.request.content.userInfo

    // ...

    // With swizzling disabled you must let Messaging know about the message, for Analytics
    // Messaging.messaging().appDidReceiveMessage(userInfo)

    // Print full message.
    print(userInfo)

    completionHandler()
  }
}
AppDelegate.swift

Objective-C

// Receive displayed notifications for iOS 10 devices.
// Handle incoming notification messages while app is in the foreground.
- (void)userNotificationCenter:(UNUserNotificationCenter *)center
       willPresentNotification:(UNNotification *)notification
         withCompletionHandler:(void (^)(UNNotificationPresentationOptions))completionHandler {
  NSDictionary *userInfo = notification.request.content.userInfo;

  // With swizzling disabled you must let Messaging know about the message, for Analytics
  // [[FIRMessaging messaging] appDidReceiveMessage:userInfo];

  // ...

  // Print full message.
  NSLog(@"%@", userInfo);

  // Change this to your preferred presentation option
  completionHandler(UNNotificationPresentationOptionBadge | UNNotificationPresentationOptionAlert);
}

// Handle notification messages after display notification is tapped by the user.
- (void)userNotificationCenter:(UNUserNotificationCenter *)center
didReceiveNotificationResponse:(UNNotificationResponse *)response
         withCompletionHandler:(void(^)(void))completionHandler {
  NSDictionary *userInfo = response.notification.request.content.userInfo;
  if (userInfo[kGCMMessageIDKey]) {
    NSLog(@"Message ID: %@", userInfo[kGCMMessageIDKey]);
  }

  // With swizzling disabled you must let Messaging know about the message, for Analytics
  // [[FIRMessaging messaging] appDidReceiveMessage:userInfo];

  // Print full message.
  NSLog(@"%@", userInfo);

  completionHandler();
}
AppDelegate.m

If you want to add custom actions to your notifications, set the click_action parameter in the notification payload. Use the value that you would use for the category key in the APNs payload. Custom actions must be registered before they can be used. For more information, see Apple's Local and Remote Notification Programming Guide.

For insight into message delivery to your app, see the FCM reporting dashboard, which records the number of messages sent and opened on iOS and Android devices, along with data for "impressions" (notifications seen by users) for Android apps.

Handle silent push notifications

When sending messages with the content_available key (equivalent to APNs's content-available, the messages will be delivered as silent notifications, waking your app in the background for tasks like background data refresh. Unlike foreground notifications, these notifications must be handled via the appDelegate(_:didReceiveRemoteNotification:fetchCompletionHandler:) method.

Implement application(_:didReceiveRemoteNotification:fetchCompletionHandler:) as shown:

Swift

func application(_ application: UIApplication,
                 didReceiveRemoteNotification userInfo: [AnyHashable: Any],
                 fetchCompletionHandler completionHandler: @escaping (UIBackgroundFetchResult)
                   -> Void) {
  // If you are receiving a notification message while your app is in the background,
  // this callback will not be fired till the user taps on the notification launching the application.
  // TODO: Handle data of notification

  // With swizzling disabled you must let Messaging know about the message, for Analytics
  // Messaging.messaging().appDidReceiveMessage(userInfo)

  // Print message ID.
  if let messageID = userInfo[gcmMessageIDKey] {
    print("Message ID: \(messageID)")
  }

  // Print full message.
  print(userInfo)

  completionHandler(UIBackgroundFetchResult.newData)
}
AppDelegate.swift

Objective-C

- (void)application:(UIApplication *)application didReceiveRemoteNotification:(NSDictionary *)userInfo
    fetchCompletionHandler:(void (^)(UIBackgroundFetchResult))completionHandler {
  // If you are receiving a notification message while your app is in the background,
  // this callback will not be fired till the user taps on the notification launching the application.
  // TODO: Handle data of notification

  // With swizzling disabled you must let Messaging know about the message, for Analytics
  // [[FIRMessaging messaging] appDidReceiveMessage:userInfo];

  // ...

  // Print full message.
  NSLog(@"%@", userInfo);

  completionHandler(UIBackgroundFetchResultNewData);
}AppDelegate.m

iOS does not guarantee the delivery of background notifications. To learn about conditions that can cause background notifications to fail, see Apple's docs on Pushing Background Updates to Your App.

Interpreting notification message payload

The payload of notification messages is a dictionary of keys and values. Notification messages sent through APNs follow the APNs payload format as below:

  {
    "aps" : {
      "alert" : {
        "body" : "great match!",
        "title" : "Portugal vs. Denmark",
      },
      "badge" : 1,
    },
    "customKey" : "customValue"
  }

Handle messages with method swizzling disabled

By default, if you assign your app's app delegate class to the UNUserNotificationCenter and Messaging delegate properties, FCM will swizzle your app delegate class to automatically associate your FCM token with the device's APNs token and pass notification-received events to Analytics. If you explicitly disable method swizzling or use a separate class for either delegate, you will need to perform both of these tasks manually.

To associate the FCM token with the device APNs token, pass the APNs token to the Messaging class in your app delegate's token refresh handler via the apnsToken property.

Swift

func application(_ application: UIApplication,
didRegisterForRemoteNotificationsWithDeviceToken deviceToken: Data) {
  Messaging.messaging().apnsToken = deviceToken;
}

Objective-C

- (void)application:(UIApplication *)application
didRegisterForRemoteNotificationsWithDeviceToken:(NSData *)deviceToken {
  [FIRMessaging messaging].APNSToken = deviceToken;
}

To pass notification reciept information to Analytics, use the appDidReceiveMessage(_:) method.

Swift

func userNotificationCenter(_ center: UNUserNotificationCenter,
                            willPresent notification: UNNotification,
  withCompletionHandler completionHandler: @escaping (UNNotificationPresentationOptions) -> Void) {
  let userInfo = notification.request.content.userInfo

  Messaging.messaging().appDidReceiveMessage(userInfo)

  // Change this to your preferred presentation option
  completionHandler([[.alert, .sound]])
}

func userNotificationCenter(_ center: UNUserNotificationCenter,
                            didReceive response: UNNotificationResponse,
                            withCompletionHandler completionHandler: @escaping () -> Void) {
  let userInfo = response.notification.request.content.userInfo

  Messaging.messaging().appDidReceiveMessage(userInfo)

  completionHandler()
}

func application(_ application: UIApplication,
didReceiveRemoteNotification userInfo: [AnyHashable : Any],
   fetchCompletionHandler completionHandler: @escaping (UIBackgroundFetchResult) -> Void) {
  Messaging.messaging().appDidReceiveMessage(userInfo)
  completionHandler(.noData)
}

Objective-C

- (void)userNotificationCenter:(UNUserNotificationCenter *)center
       willPresentNotification:(UNNotification *)notification
         withCompletionHandler:(void (^)(UNNotificationPresentationOptions))completionHandler {
  NSDictionary *userInfo = notification.request.content.userInfo;

  [[FIRMessaging messaging] appDidReceiveMessage:userInfo];

  // Change this to your preferred presentation option
  completionHandler(UNNotificationPresentationOptionBadge | UNNotificationPresentationOptionAlert);
}

- (void)userNotificationCenter:(UNUserNotificationCenter *)center
didReceiveNotificationResponse:(UNNotificationResponse *)response
         withCompletionHandler:(void(^)(void))completionHandler {
  NSDictionary *userInfo = response.notification.request.content.userInfo;

  [[FIRMessaging messaging] appDidReceiveMessage:userInfo];

  completionHandler();
}

- (void)application:(UIApplication *)application
didReceiveRemoteNotification:(NSDictionary *)userInfo
fetchCompletionHandler:(void (^)(UIBackgroundFetchResult result))completionHandler {
  [[FIRMessaging messaging] appDidReceiveMessage:userInfo];
  completionHandler(UIBackgroundFetchResultNoData);
}