PSA/Reminder: Notifications in iOS foregrounded apps

One thing that repeatedly confuses people is that: in foregrounded apps on iOS, when a notification comes in (push notification or local notification), the operating system does not show the notification at the top of the screen automatically. You have to handle it yourself and show something if you want to do that.

I think the reason is because in, say, a messaging app, you might not want the messages coming in to overlay over the app when you are already showing them elsewhere on the screen already.

This is different from the way things work on Android. And often confuses people and makes them think it isn’t working.

Just a head’s up slash reminder about this behavior!

Also, note that push notifications don’t work on the iOS simulator! That’s just because of the way that Apple built the iOS simulator; this is true whether you use Expo or not.

Charlie

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