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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-06-18T08:24:31+00:00

I have read and reread the Apple push notification documentation found here APNS Quality

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I have read and reread the Apple push notification documentation found here

APNS Quality of Service

but cannot seem to find an answer to my question. What I would like to know is, does Apple make any representations about the reliability of their APNS service in terms of guaranteed delivery times and its suitability as an emergency notification service. I have seen many stack overflow answers and off site articles and forum responses that allude to the fact that the service is not guaranteed, but the most I can gleen from the apple documentation is this

Apple Push Notification Service includes a default Quality of Service (QoS) component that performs a store-and-forward function. If APNs attempts to deliver a notification but the device is offline, the QoS stores the notification. It retains only one notification per application on a device: the last notification received from a provider for that application. When the offline device later reconnects, the QoS forwards the stored notification to the device. The QoS retains a notification for a limited period before deleting it.

Which would seem to indicate that only the latest is message can be assured of delivery in the event that the device is offline, but that isn’t quite what I am asking.

My [Real] Question: Is there any official statement from Apple regarding delivery time of APNS pushes and APNS’s suitability as an emergency notification service?

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    Short answer, no, there is nothing official.

    Considering all of the possible points of failure that may lead to a notification not getting delivered, I would say APNS should NOT be considered as an “emergency notification service.”

    Case-in-point, last year, during Hurricane Sandy, certain carriers used WEA (Wireless Emergency Alerts) to dispatch what looked like simple push notifications but were in fact delivered in a completely different way that, briefly, must be supported by the carrier and has the huge advantage of not being affected by network congestion. You can read more about that here: http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/hurricane-sandy-wireless-emergency-alerts-people/story?id=17612492

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