Apple plans to add opt-in web push notifications to iOS 16 in 2023, letting Safari users get notifications from websites
finally! 👏 https://twitter.com/... @webkit : WebKit Features in Safari 16 Beta — Web Inspector Extensions, Container Queries, Web Push for macOS Ventura, Subgrid, Flexbox Inspector, Accessibility Improvements, Offset Path, Animatable Grids, Overscroll Behavior, Shared Worker, and much more. #WWDC22 https://webkit.org/...
MacRumorsSami Fathi
Context & Ripple Effects
This announcement lands after months of detective work rather than out of nowhere: code in the iOS 15.4 betas had already shown Apple building push-notification support for web-based apps, and a follow-up find pointed to broader PWA work including WebXR. The WWDC22 plan makes it official — opt-in web push coming to iOS 16 in 2023.
Safari users on iOS 16 can opt in to notifications from websites, giving developers of home-screen web apps the re-engagement channel that was previously reserved for native App Store apps.
Apple's own WebKit team ships the feature first on macOS Ventura alongside Safari 16's other additions like Container Queries and Subgrid, making cross-device web push consistent for developers targeting both platforms.
Second-order effects
One of the strongest arguments for building a native iOS app over a web app erodes, shifting some leverage from App Store distribution toward the open web — notable given Apple's reported 800 million weekly App Store visitors.
With Apple Pay already appearing in Chrome and Edge under apparent Digital Markets Act pressure, regulators and rivals gain fresh evidence that iOS exclusivity is negotiable, raising the stakes for what gets opened next.
Third-order effects
If the pattern holds, iOS progressively converges with Android's treatment of the web as a first-class app platform, weakening the App Store's gatekeeper role without Apple formally conceding it.
Regulatory frameworks like the Digital Markets Act appear increasingly able to extract platform openness from Apple feature by feature, setting a template other gatekeepers may be held to.
The trend: iOS is incrementally opening closed platform capabilities — web push, third-party browser payments — under combined developer demand and regulatory pressure, narrowing the moat around native App Store apps.
The last time I taught a public Web Push Notifications workshop was 5 years ago; devs stopped interested in the topic because of the lack of support on iOS. I have done just a couple of private workshops since then. Will people get interested again, or is it too late? https://twi…
Web Push is coming to Safari 16 on macOS Ventura. It sends notifications even if Safari is closed. Is built with the same web technologies as other browsers. Doesn't require an Apple Developer Program membership. And is coming to iOS and iPadOS next year. https://webkit.org/... h…
Hell has frozen over - Apple is finally adding push support to Safari. It only took them 6+ years to catch up with the rest of the market! https://twitter.com/...
“Web Push is coming to Safari 16 on macOS Ventura. [...] It uses the same combination of web standards you may be familiar with from other browsers: Push API and Notifications API, along with Service Worker. [...] And look for Web Push for iOS and iPadOS in 2023.” Yay—finally! 👏 …
There will be more about the details of our Web Push implementation coming this week — including in the session “Meet Web Push for Safari”, available to watch tomorrow Tuesday June 7 at https://developer.apple.com/
Last week I've advised against going with PWA given the lack of support from Safari in the last several years. Push notifications will now supposedly be implemented next year https://webkit.org/... which is great but doesn't change the fact that whole PWA ecosystem is a mess. htt…
@cassidoo How about just update Safari with modern PWA support? Background audio, notifications, and all the other things Apple keeps blocking for anti-competitive reasons
Therefore, the only reason to withhold push from the web is to force companies to maintain a presence in the App Store, even when it costs them more time and money to do so.
It's great to see how much Safari has improved this year, but staying mum on whether Safari iOS/iPadOS will ever support web push basically means nobody believes they're ever going to do it. It'd be better to just come out and say it's never going to happen 🤷
Look, I'm not some kind of push notification apologist. Push notifications suck 99% of the time, and you're probably right to be grateful that Safari doesn't support it on iOS. But the reality: push subscribers is a metric companies think they need. Which requires native.
@firt @JudahGabriel Web Push for macOS (and coming next year for iOS) was newly announced today. Not just the old proprietary Safari Push Notifications. It's real Push API, Notifications API, RFC-compliant delivery protocol. Watch for the talk about it later in the week.
WebKit Features in Safari 16 Beta — Web Inspector Extensions, Container Queries, Web Push for macOS Ventura, Subgrid, Flexbox Inspector, Accessibility Improvements, Offset Path, Animatable Grids, Overscroll Behavior, Shared Worker, and much more. #WWDC22 https://webkit.org/...
“it would annoy users” isn't really the argument for not supporting push in Safari that people think it is. Because every goddamn app in the App Store annoys users with push for marketing reasons. If Apple really cared about annoying users, they'd kill push altogether.
For everyone rightly concerned about the user experience of Web Push in Safari — a website or web app using our implementation can only ask you for permission to send Notifications after you've indicated such interest with a user gesture, like clicking on a button.