bold (or other formatting) in iOS push notification

Question

The built-in Messages app makes message-senders' names in push notifications bold.

Is it possible to do this for my app? What would such a payload look like?

If it's relevant, I'm testing using the Mac app APN Tester to send a push to my iPhone, with this type of payload {"aps": {"alert": "hey bob", "badge": 2}}.

(I tried asterisks *text* and HTML tags <b>text</b> but they don't do anything. I can't seem to find documentation on it, either.)

Fisherman

Answer 1

There is no rich text functionality in iOS Push Notifications.

An alternative for iOS 8.2 plus may be to use the 'title' to display the sender's name, and place the new message in the body. For example, try a payload such as this:

{
    "aps": {
        "alert": {
            "title": "Jim",
            "body": "Hey bob"
        },
        "badge": 2
    }
}

Lilywhite

Still working in iOS 10. The output is the same that the Whatsapp app gives you. The title is bold and the body is regular – Humidistat

Answer 2

If you are using Parse as your backend, this will work -

data: {
        alert: {
                 "title" : "My title",
                 "body"  : "My message body"
               }
      }

Refractive