CODEWITHSUNDEEP
iosiphoneapple-push-notificationsapple-watch
Evan Kirkwood
Evan Kirkwood

Reputation: 428

Can a remote notification sound still play on an iPhone when paired with an Apple Watch?

The Apple Watch Programming Guide states:

When one of your app’s local or remote notifications arrives on the user’s iPhone, iOS decides whether to display that notification on the iPhone or on the Apple Watch.

I can find discussion about circumstances when notifications don't don't get delivered to the Apple Watch (for example here), but what I'm really concerned with is what the behavior on the iPhone is when a remote notification does get delivered to the Apple Watch.

We have a custom alert sound bundled in our App, and specified with the sound property in our APNS notification payload. The custom sound is played on the iPhone as expected (even when the iPhone is locked) unless an Apple Watch is paired with the device. Then, the iPhone does not play the alert sound. I can't find anything definitive to say:

  1. Is it expected/by-design behavior to ignore the sound if the notification is delivered to an Apple Watch?
  2. Is there any way to both receive the notification on the Apple Watch and still play the custom sound?

Upvotes: 3

Views: 908

Answers (1)

Senseful
Senseful

Reputation: 91681

According to this thread, custom notifications for the watch are not supported:

Custom notification sounds on Apple Watch are currently not supported.

I noticed that when your notification has no message, it will never be delivered to the watch. Thus one hack would be to send two notifications each time instead of one:

  1. Custom sound, no message: This is going to be played on the phone, even if the screen is off.
  2. No sound, with a message: This will play either on the watch or phone, depending on Apple's logic.

Upvotes: 2

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