Design a push notification

Last update: July 14, 2025

Topics:
Push

CREATED FOR:

Beginner
User

Title and Body

To compose your message, click the Title and Body fields. Use the personalization editor to define content, personalize data and add dynamic content. Learn more about personalization and dynamic content in the personalization editor.

Use the device preview section to visualize how the push notification displays on iOS and Android devices.

On click behavior

You can select the behavior when a user clicks on the body of the push notification.

To open the app, select the Open app option. The app associated with the notification is defined in the channel configuration (i.e. message preset).
To redirect the user to a specific piece of content within an app, select the Deeplink option. The specific content can be a specific view, a particular section of a page, or a certain tab. Once the option is selected, enter the deeplink in the associated field.
To redirect the user to an external URL, use the Web URL option. Once the option is selected, enter the URL in the associated field.

Add media

In the iOS version of your push notification, you can add an image, a video or a GIF that are displayed within your notification.

In the Android version, you can only add an image icon, and an image for expanded notifications.

Two options are available. You can:

Use the Add media button to select an asset in Adobe Experience Manager Assets.

Learn how to use Adobe Experience Manager Assets on this page.
Or enter the URL of the media in the Add media field. In that case, you can add personalization to the URL.

Once added, the media displays on the right of the notification body.

Add buttons

Create an actionable notification by adding buttons to your push content.

If the device screen is locked, these buttons are not displayed: only the the Title and the Message of the notification are visible. If their device is unlocked, recipients will see the buttons.

In the Android version, you can add up to three buttons.

In the iOS version, a notification category identifier is specified. Notification categories need to be preconfigured in the iOS app which will define the buttons to be displayed and actions taken. See the Apple documentation for more details.

Use the Add button to define settings: the label and associated action. Possible actions are the same as for on-click behavior.
Use the Expand view icon under the central preview image to preview your personalized buttons.

Send a silent notification

A silent push notification (or background notification) is a hidden instruction that is delivered to the application. It is used for example to notify your application about the availability of new content or initiate a download in the background.

Select the Silent Notification option to silently notify the application: in this case, the notification is transferred directly to the application. No alert is displayed on the device screen.

Use the Custom data section to add key-value pairs.

Custom data

In the Custom data section, you can add custom variables to the payload, depending on your mobile application configuration. For more on how to set up push notifications in Adobe Experience Platform, refer to this section

Advanced options

You can configure Advanced options for your push notification. Available parameters are listed below:

Parameter

Description

Collapsible (iOS / Android)

A collapsible message is a message that may be replaced by a new message if it has become outdated. A common use cases of collapsible messages are messages used to tell a mobile app to sync data from the server. An example would be a sports app that updates users with the latest score. Only the most recent message is relevant. On the other hand, with non-collapsible message, every message is important to the client app and needs to be delivered.

Custom sound (iOS / Android)

The sound to be played by the mobile terminal when the notification is received. The sound needs to be bundled in the app.

Badges (iOS / Android)

A badge is used to display directly on the application icon the number of new unread information.
The badge value will disappear as soon as the user opens or reads the new content from the application. When a notification is received on a device, it can refresh or add a badge value for the related app.
For example, if you are storing the number of unread articles of your customers, you can leverage personalization to send the unique unread articles badge value for each customer. For more personalization, refer to this section.

Notification group (iOS only)

Associate a notification group to the push notification.
Starting with iOS 12, notification groups allow you to consolidate message threads and notification topics into thread IDs. For example, a brand might send marketing notifications under one group ID, while keeping more operational type notifications under one or more different IDs.
To illustrate this, you can have groupID: 123 “check out the new spring collection of sweaters” and groupID: 456 “your package was delivered” notification groups. In this example, all delivery notifications would be bundled under group ID: 456.

Notification channel (Android only)

Associate a notification channel to the push notification.
Starting in Android 8.0 (API level 26), all notifications must be assigned to a channel in order to display. For more on this, refer to the Android developer documentation.

Add content-availability flag (iOS only)

Sends the content available flag in the push payload to ensure that the app is woken up as soon as it receives the push notification, meaning that the app will be able to access the payload data.
This works even if the app is running in the background and without needing any user interaction (e.g. tapping on Push notification). However, this does not apply if the app is not running. For more on this, refer to the Apple developer documentation.

Add mutable-content flag (iOS only)

Sends the mutable-content flag in the push payload and will allow the push notification content to be modified by a notification service application extension provided in iOS SDK. For more on this, refer to Apple developer documentation.
You can then leverage your mobile app extensions to further modify the content or presentation of arriving push notifications sent from Journey Optimizer. For example, users can leverage this option to decrypt data, change the body or title text of a notification, add a thread identifier to a notification etc.

Notification visibility (Android only)

Defines the push notification’s visibility.
Private will show the notification on all lockscreens, but conceal sensitive or private information on secure lockscreens.
Public will show the notification in its entirety on all lockscreens.
Secret will not reveal any part of the notification on a secure lockscreen.
For more on this, refer the Android developer documentation.

Notification priority (Android only)

Defines the push notification’s importance from Low to Max. This determines how “intrusive” the push notification will be when it is delivered. For more on this, refer to the Android developer documentation

Delivery priority (Android only)

Sets up a high or normal priority for your push notifications. For more information on message priority, refer to the Google developer documentation.

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