How To Enable Safari Push Notifications On IPhone Or IPad

iOS 16.4 lets you optionally receive Safari push notifications, but the process isn’t straightforward.

iPhone users can add websites to their iOS 17 home screens as progressive web apps, and essentially turn sites into standalone apps. However, there are a few features typically reserved for iOS apps, and one of those is push notifications. If you do want to receive push notifications from a website, there is a workaround in the Settings app that involves flipping a WebKit flag. This gives web apps the ability to send push notifications through Safari, as long as the website natively supports browser notifications. Although Apple announced this functionality in 2022 and shipped it in 2023, it’s still considered an experimental feature, so you’ll have to follow the steps below to use them.

iOS 17 review: The bubble is now greener on the other side

Apple is embracing its tight ecosystem with this release, further alienating Android users in the process.

How to enable push notifications in Safari

If you have a recent iPhone, or an iPad running version 16.4 or later, you can follow the steps below to enable Safari push notifications for specific websites. By doing so, you will receive alerts similar to those of native iOS apps, helping you know when your favorite websites publish timely content.

1. Open the Settings app on iOS 17.

2. Scroll down to the Safari tab, and tap on it.

3. Find the Advanced tab at the bottom of the screen and press it.

4. Tap the Feature Flags tab.

5. You will see a long list of WebKit flags organized in alphabetical order. Look for Notifications and flip the toggle them on.

How to add a website to your iOS Home Screen

After that, you’ll need to manually add each website you’d like to receive notifications from to your Home Screen. Here’s how:

1. Launch the Safari app and visit the website you’d like to receive push notifications from.

2. Tap on the Share button in the middle of the bottom bar

3. Choose Add to Home Screen.

4. Optionally rename the web app, then tap Add in the top right corner.

5. It will now appear on your Home Screen as a native app. Launch the newly-added web app.

6. Find the website’s notifications settings and enable push notifications.

7. iOS will ask for your permission to enable them. Tap Allow to finish.

Now, the web app will be able to notify you as long as you keep it on your Home Screen. If you delete it, then the permission is revoked automatically, and you won’t be able to receive alerts from it until you add it again.

Should you use push notifications from websites on iPhone?

As you can see, the process to enable Safari push notifications on iOS and iPadOS is more complex when compared to macOS because you need to add the web app to the Home Screen for it to work. On new Macs, you can just allow or deny website permissions without needing to bookmark them in any way. Regardless, it can be done now on newer versions of iOS 16 or later. It’s useful, but be sure to choose wisely which websites you give access to notifications in Safari. If you give permission to the wrong website, your iPhone could quickly be cluttered with spam.

18:04