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IOS Web Push Notifications

REQUIREMENTS

To be able to implement this guide, you need to learn how to insert PHP snippets to your website.

You can find guide here: WP Beginner

Since iOS 16.4 Apple added support for web push notifications for all their mobile devices, which allows to send web push notifications without having native mobile application.

iOS only allows to receive web push notification to PWA version of your website. It does not allow to receive Web Push notifications to browser, like it works in android and desktop devices.

This is quick example of how it works:


Without PWA plugin​

To make that working without additional PWA plugins, you need to make basic PWA version of your website.

To make that easily website must have manifest.json file located in root of website.

This is example of basic manifest.json file:

{
  "short_name": "wordplus.org",
  "name": "WordPlus.org",
  "icons": [],
  "start_url": "./",
  "display": "standalone",
  "orientation": "portrait"
}

More advanced manifest.json file guide can be found here

Besides that you need to add manifest.json link to your website head part, you can do it with php snippet for example:

add_action( 'wp_head', function (){
    echo '<link rel="manifest" href="/manifest.json"/>';
}

After that website must be added to ios home-screen as web application and web push feature will start to work there.

With PWA plugin​

If you want to make it work with ready to use PWA Plugins, you need to find the plugin which will be compatible with OneSignal push notifications integration as with most of PWA solutions the built-in WebPush notifications system of Better Messages will not work due to browser limitations to the number of service workers.