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Firebase Cloud Messaging
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Firebase Cloud Messaging (FCM) is a cross-platform messaging solution that lets you reliably send
messages.
Using
FCM, you can notify a client app that new email or other data
is available to sync. You can send notification messages to drive user re-engagement and
retention. For use cases such as instant messaging, a message can transfer a
payload of up to 4096 bytes to a client app.
Ready to get started? Choose your platform:
iOS+
Android
Web
Flutter
Unity
C++
Key capabilities
Send notification messages or data messages |
Send notification messages that are displayed to your user.
Or send data messages and determine completely what happens in
your application code. See
Message types. |
Versatile message targeting |
Distribute messages to your client app in any of 3 ways—to
single devices, to groups of devices, or to devices subscribed to topics.
|
How does it work?
An FCM implementation includes two main components for
sending and receiving:
- A trusted environment such as Cloud Functions for Firebase or an app server
on which to build, target, and send messages.
- An Apple, Android, or web (JavaScript) client app that receives
messages via the corresponding platform-specific transport service.
You can send messages via
the Firebase Admin SDK or the
FCM server protocol.
You can use
the Notifications composer for testing and to send marketing or engagement
messages using powerful built-in targeting and analytics or custom
imported segments.
See the architectural
overview for more detail and important
information about the components of FCM.
Implementation path
|
Set up the FCM SDK |
Set up Firebase and FCM on your app according to the
setup instructions for your platform. |
|
Develop your client app |
Add message handling, topic subscription logic, or other optional
features to your client app. During the development, you can easily
send test messages from
the Notifications composer. |
|
Develop your app server |
Decide whether you want to use the
Firebase Admin SDK or the server protocol to create your sending
logic—logic to authenticate, build send requests, handle responses, and
so on. Then build out the logic in your trusted environment. |
Next steps
Except as otherwise noted, the content of this page is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License, and code samples are licensed under the Apache 2.0 License. For details, see the Google Developers Site Policies. Java is a registered trademark of Oracle and/or its affiliates.
Last updated 2025-04-15 UTC.
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