Hello friends 👋, it’s that time again. A new ntfy release has landed. This one is pretty cool!
For those who don’t know, ntfy is a a tool that lets you send push notifications to your phone from any script or server using a simple HTTP PUT/POST requests. It’s 100% open source and self-hostable, and has an Android app and a web app. You can use ntfy like this (more in the docs). This will send a notification to your phone:
curl -d "Backup on $(hostname) complete" ntfy.sh/mytopic
I host free and open version on ntfy.sh, but you can host your own of course.
🔥 What’s new? With this release, the ntfy web app now contains a progressive web app (PWA) with Web Push support, which means you’ll be able to install the ntfy web app on your desktop or phone similar to a native app (even on iOS! 🥳). Installing the PWA gives ntfy web its own launcher, a standalone window, push notifications, and an app badge with the unread notification count. Note that this needs to be configured for selfhosted servers!
On top of that, this release also brings dark mode 🧛🌙 to the web app.
🙏 A huge thanks for this release goes to @nimbleghost, for basically implementing the Web Push / PWA and dark mode feature by himself. I’m really grateful for your contributions.
❤️ If you like ntfy, please consider sponsoring us via GitHub Sponsors or Liberapay, or buying a paid plan via the web app. Contrary to “popular” belief, I am not swimming in money due to the paid plans. 😬
The biggest reason is that PWA allows for web push notifications.
iOS is pretty strict when it comes to background apps keeping open connections, that’s one of the reasons why there is no gotify app on iOS. They list the possible workaround with apple’s APN service, but that would kind of defeat the purpose of selfhosting,
I’m afraid the biggest obstacle would be Apple’s strict restrictions on background services. We cannot keep a persistent WebSocket connection in the background without abusing some APIs, which will absolutely disqualify the app from going onto the App Store and drain the battery significantly. Notifications could only be delivered through APN, which requires a developer account and a central server to manage notifications and send them to Apple before reaching the user, but this is not what gotify is designed for.
//edit: If you check the ntfy docs, you’ll see that instant delivery is not supported on iOS. So if you have uses that are time-sensitive, PWA with web push definitely has the advantage.
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How would the PWA be any better than the actual native iOS app?
The biggest reason is that PWA allows for web push notifications.
iOS is pretty strict when it comes to background apps keeping open connections, that’s one of the reasons why there is no gotify app on iOS. They list the possible workaround with apple’s APN service, but that would kind of defeat the purpose of selfhosting,
https://github.com/gotify/server/issues/87#issuecomment-457453135
//edit: If you check the ntfy docs, you’ll see that instant delivery is not supported on iOS. So if you have uses that are time-sensitive, PWA with web push definitely has the advantage.