"Push Notifications" Target Capability and Parse Push

Question

I'm using Parse Push to send notifications to registered devices in my app. During development, we've always had the "Push Notifications" slider in Target -> Capabilities set to off, and we haven't had problems sending or receiving notifications.

As for deployment, though, do we need to set this slider to be in the "On" position to receive push notifications? I don't see it anywhere in the Getting Started guide. If it's not required, what is the push notifications slider used for?

Answer 1

When you submit your app to the AppStore, there is a validation phase that occurs. The provisioning profile of your application will be compared against your production certificate. If there is a mismatch between what you have specified in your app capabilities and how your certificates are set up, you will see warnings during validation. You probably haven't had an issue yet, as you have been using a development certificate for your application.

If you want to receive push notifications in a production app, enable the Push capability and be sure to generate and upload production push certificates to your Parse app.

More info here: https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/Miscellaneous/Reference/EntitlementKeyReference/Chapters/EnablingLocalAndPushNotifications.html

and here: https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/NetworkingInternet/Conceptual/RemoteNotificationsPG/Introduction.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40008194