Amazon Pinpoint Adds Support for iOS 13 and watchOS 6 Push Notifications

Posted on: Sep 10, 2019

Amazon Pinpoint now supports the apns-push-type header field for push notifications that you send using the Apple Push Notification service (APNs). Apple recently announced that this new header would be required for all push notifications sent to iOS 13 and watchOS 6 devices. Beginning today, Amazon Pinpoint automatically adds this required header to all APNs messages that it sends. Amazon Pinpoint customers don't have to perform any additional steps to include the header.

Devices that use iOS 13 and watchOS 6 use the apns-push-type header to determine how to handle incoming push notifications. If you configure Amazon Pinpoint to send an APNs notification as a silent message (which isn't displayed on the recipient's device), Amazon Pinpoint automatically sets the value of the apns-push-type header to background. Otherwise, Amazon Pinpoint sets the value of the header to alert. Devices that use iOS 13 or watchOS 6 receive these notifications as expected. Devices that use older versions of iOS and watchOS ignore the new header and handle incoming messages as they normally would.

Note 

If you specify the raw content of an APNs push notification, the message payload has to include the content-available key. The value of the content-available key has to be an integer, and can only be 0 or 1. If you're sending an alert, set the value of content-available to 0. If you're sending a background notification, set the value of content-available to 1. Additionally, background notification payloads must not include the alert, badge, or sound keys. For more information, see Generating a Remote Notification and Pushing Background Updates to Your App on the Apple Developer website.

Amazon Pinpoint helps you engage with your customers through the email, SMS, push notification, and voice channels. You can use Amazon Pinpoint to send targeted messages (such as promotions and retention campaigns), as well as transactional messages (such as order confirmations and password reset messages).

For more information, see the Amazon Pinpoint User Guide.