Back in 2022, Apple promised to introduce a long-overdue feature in 2023: Safari push notification support on newer versions of iOS 16 and iPadOS 16. And the day has finally come.
If you have a recent iPhone, such as the iPhone 14 Pro Max, 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.
- Launch the Settings app on your iPhone or iPad running iOS/iPadOS 16.4 or later.
- Scroll down and navigate to Safari.
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Click Advanced and then Experimental Features.
- You will find a Push API toggle at the bottom of the list. Make sure it's enabled.
- Now launch the Safari app and visit the website you'd like to receive push notifications from. Note that the website has to support push notifications for this feature to work. For demonstration purposes, we will be choosing Twitter.
- Tap on the Share button in the middle of the bottom bar
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Choose Add to Home Screen.
- Optionally rename the web app, then tap Add in the top right corner.
- It will now appear on your Home Screen as a native app. Launch the newly-added web app.
- Find the website's notifications settings and enable push notifications.
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iOS will ask for your permission to enable them.
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.
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 it in any way. Regardless, it can be done now on newer versions of iOS 16.