How Do Push Notifications Work?

When I made the videos on how to implement push notifications, a lot of people had questions about how push notifications actually work. So I made a little video to talk about the logistics of push notifications; how they work and what to take into account. Hope this helps!

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⏱ Timestamps
00:00 - Intro: Push Notifications The Big Picture
00:21 - How Do Push Notifications Get Sent?
02:54 - Push Notification Tokens
04:14 - Send Push Notifications to Groups
05:16 - Where To Send Your Push Notification From?
07:32 - Types of Push Notifications

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#pushnotifications #crossplatform #apps

[TonyEdwardsPZ]

Nice vid. It set up the context of push notifications really well. Thanks for making it.

[StudyStreamPlus]

Thank you for the video. This is a great overview. It helped me for sure.

[jose_develaw]

Great as usual! For me the most complicated part of the equation is to separate app-device from user/session. I mean, two or more users are able to login from same device, but you want notifications to appear only if they are aimed to the current logged-in user... that's tricky... A video regarding how to create a new token (only when a different user has logged-in) and send it to the backend or how to control those notifications locally would be awesome! I hope I have explain myself...

[poorneshv]

Wow!! thanks for making more content on Push Notifications.
Thank you again for making a lot of amazing contents.

[EdRawrDev]

sir gerald i've trying to work with PN with FMC in MAUI with a lot of struggle, would you mind to do a video about it? my struggle is when i try to navegate from the notification to specific page, thanks.

[mtiapps]

thank you so much this video helped me alot ❤❤

[CoderboyPB]

Hey Gerald, a very great video to see the 'great picture' of the topic. Bedankt :-)

[eenhalvekilokaas]

Hey Gerald, once again an amazing vid! I'm wondering if you would consider making this a series? Because I would absolutely love that! The bigger picture of perhaps mvvm, or the mainstream of an app (what is ti and how do you prevent it from being overloaded etc).

Keep up the amazing work of sharing knowledge in a very understandable way! :)

[faizzz__]

Can push notification work with intranet? I mean this remote notification work if have access internet like into google service for android user, but in my company have restricted and security network, so the device can't browse or something but can access company site, it's possible to do push notification work in intranet?

[mohammedalsabahii]

Thank you for making this amazing content, i tried before to using notification but i have big problem when i closed the app i don't get new notifications i think it must working in background how can i fix this issue ? thank you again

[murugarajuperumalla]

Can we get low level on small implementation on push notifications if possible, kind of Poc

[kevinpantelakis]

This vas a nice intro to Push Notifications, thank! As we talk about push Notifications, I wonder how would you handle backgrounding with Xamarin/MAUI as in work that is done even when the app is not in the foreground for Android and iOS?

[PierreH]

If I want to send a push notification to an Android app, from the Amazon store, running on a Windows 11 machine, which vendor server do I have to talk to?
Microsoft, Google, Amazon?

[anassnassim]

thank you so much for the tutorial
if you have some time can you add tutorial how to send notification from c# code not on the firebase console

[mb-faze]

I don't think you answered the part as to how the end user device ensures that it receives the notification. I'd very much like it if you explained the whole process in terms of bytes being set from one computer/device program to another on a particular IP address then things might be clearer - at least for me.

Take the Ring door bell as an example. You configure this by connecting the code running on the physical doorbell to a home router. The doorbell has an IP address on the router. If you're sensible, you make it a static IP address - why? well presumably, the doorbell program contacts the remote Ring server somewhere and updates some record that associates the router IP and local (LAN) IP with the some unique code for that exact doorbell. (Possibly the IMEI number). How often this contacting the server database is done I don't know. Certainly the doorbell's local LAN IP could change (on a router DHCP reset) and the ISP might change the router's IP address. (But really the doorbell/Ring server shouldn't care about the doorbell's address since, presumably the doorbell code knows what IP address the Ring's server is listening on.)

When the doorbell button is pressed, the code in the doorbell must send some packet of information off to the server with IMEI (or whatever) identification. The server then looks up who it should send a notification to. The notification engine (FCM for example) then sends the notification.... but how does it know what IP/device ID to send this to? The target device (your phone) could be anywhere in the world and could certainly have moved network since the last time a notification was received. I can see no other way of getting this to work other than the client phone updating it's location/address (to the FCM server) on a frequent basis. Is this done through your google (android) account? If so, how often does it do this update?

I ask this, because you'll see plenty of frustrated people asking why they are not getting notifications from doorbell button presses. The answer is, usually, to make sure the Ring app is always running (presumably - pinging the app server which is telling the FCM server about the whereabouts of the client's phone.) But android has an annoying habit of disregarding all attempts to keep applications running even in background. Besides, notifications *should* work even if the app isn't running. Ring seems to be particularly bad. Leave your home *without* opening the Ring app on your phone, drive about swapping from one mobile phone/cell tower to another, then come home and reconnect to your home wifi, press the doorbell as a test and you have a very good chance that you wont get a notification (immediately).

I'm sort of guessing that this isn't Ring's fault. The doorbell action certainly requires very fast notifications - a feature not necessarily as important as other notifications like new emails. But fast notifications requires the phone's location on the network to be constantly up to date in the FCM database.

[TazBo-wdig]

It’s 3p per sms how much for a push notification? Thanks

[mariselvam]

Hi Gerald, can you do a video for .NET MAUI push notifications ?

[jagadishwarballa]

How can we send push notifications in Maui? Do you have any videos?

[hasithadananjaya]

Hey Gerald, Many thanks for doing such great videos. Simply love it. If possible would you be able to take stab at doing a video on UWP (Xamarin Forms) push notifications. Because, Microsoft dev center, Azure notification Hub and App Certificate configurations are bit confusing in MS docs. Thank you.

[ranajitkoley]

If I try to use signalr, do I still need to rely on Google or Apple ?