AutomationIntegrations

Push Notifications

Send messages to mobile, tablet, or desktop devices.
Push Notifications Feature Deprecated

The Push Notifications feature was deprecated in December 2024. While existing uses of the feature will continue to appear in apps, ongoing challenges with Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) in general results in push notifications not working as expected. Read more here.

Introduction

Push notifications are messages sent to a user’s mobile, tablet, or desktop device. These notifications can be sent to a user even when they do not have the app open. Push notifications appear in the notification center of the user’s device.

System Requirements
  • Apple devices: iOS and iPadOS 16.4 (and higher). Deep linking is not possible on Apple devices.
  • Android devices: While push notifications are available on Android, their reliability is volatile and varies by manufacturer and operating system version.

Adding and Configuring the Action

1

In Glide, click the Settings icon.

2

Find the Integrations section and then select Push Notifications.

3

Click the Add to app button.

Features

To send a push notification to a user, you first need to request the user for permission. Once the user has enabled push notifications for your app, you can then send them a push notification.

Request to allow push notifications

The Request to allow push notifications permissions action is used to ask a user if they would like to allow push notifications. When this action runs, the user will be prompted to allow or not allow push notifications.

You can add this action to a button or add the action as a step in a sequence of a workflow. If the user chooses to not allow push notifications, you will not be able to send them push notifications.

On mobile devices, the user must first install the app to their home screen in order to allow push notifications. Learn more about installing apps here.

Push notifications access granted

The Push notification access granted feature tracks whether users have given permission to receive push notifications from your app. To use it, you must first create a column with the feature enabled.

1

In the Data Editor, open the table you want to edit.

2

Add a new column by clicking the plus (+) symbol to the right of the table

  • New columns added with the plus button will always appear on the right of the table. If you’d like to add a column somewhere else in your data, you can select the dropdown menu on an existing column and choose Add column right. You can also click and drag columns to rearrange them.
3

Name the column.

4

For Type, search for Push notifications access granted or navigate to Integrations → Push notifications → Push notifications access granted.

5

The column will automatically generate with checkboxes to verify if access has been granted or not.

6

Select Done to save the column.

Send push notification

The Send push notification action is used to send a push notification to your users. Once you’ve configured the recipient list, you can then customize the title and body text of the notification, and even include a specific screen link to bring users directly to a certain part of your app.

1

Click on the plus (+) sign in the Components panel to add a new component that supports actions, or select an existing component to add an action.

2

In the General tab on the right side of the Layout Editor, navigate to the Actions section and search for Send Push Notification or navigate to Integrations → Push Notification → Send Push Notification.

3

Select the icon and title for your action.

4

Choose if you will send the notification to everyone or only specific users.

  • If you choose to send only to specific users, you will need to specify the Recipient email, which can be a column from your data or a custom value. When setting up this column, the field types Email, Split Text, or Text with a single email address can be used.
5

Enter a value for the notification Title, or select a column from your data.

6

Enter a value for the notification Message text, or select a column from your data.

7

If you’d like to include a Link to screen to direct users to, include that link.

  • To get the link for the notification, open the published app in your browser, navigate to the right page, and copy the URL from your browser. Note that deep links do not work on Apple devices.
Ready to automate?

You can use a Template column to create customized push notifications for different users.

To learn more generally about Integrations in Glide, including how they affect your app’s usage, check out our Introduction to Integrations.

Frequently Asked Questions

No, it is not currently possible to know if a user allowed or did not allow push notifications. However, you can create a custom action combining a Request push notification permissions action and a Set column values action. The Set column values action can allow you to save a value to the Data Editor when a user clicks a button that runs the Request push notification permissions action.

If you have declined to allow push notifications, you will need to enable push notifications in your device’s settings. For example, on iOS, you will need to go to your Notifications settings and toggle on push notifications for your app.

No, push notifications are not supported in Classic Apps.