iOS push notifications

Questions
#1

One of the upcoming features on our game roadmap is push notifications.
I’m aware of extension-push, and that the Android implementation uses Firebase Cloud Messaging and that the iOS implementation uses the native APNS system.

Given that the iOS implementation requires us to have some kind of backend,

  • can anyone recommend a dashboard/provider similar to Firebase that integrates with APNS and will allow sending one-shot notifications? I’m aware of things like AWS & Azure but they seem to require integration with our own server. We don’t have a server.
  • given that Firebase integrates with APNS, why (precisely, technically) can’t we use the Firebase dashboard to send APNS notifications to iOS devices?

thanks

#2

I think it’s mainly a matter of making some changes to the iOS part of extension, but I haven’t looked into it really.

#3

Yes, if it became extension-firebase-cloud-messaging and implemented the corresponding Firebase SDK on iOS then it would work for sure.
But I don’t understand why the Firebase client SDK is necessary to receive notifications through APNs, when extension-push has already done everything.
I guess the answer is probably “Google has decided not to send notifications to a device if you’re not using the Firebase SDK”

#4

Well, Firebase needs to get a push token from the device somehow right? This is why you need the Firebase SDK.

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