How to detect that a user uninstalled an iOS App? I need to push a serious notification

Question

I know Apple won't let you know when a user uninstalls your app.

I have an old legacy SMS system to send alert Short Message to end users. Most of these messages are serious. There's a bottleneck with the GSM module when sending hundreds SMS users simultaneously. Delay is inevitable.

Thus, I built a new alert system to send push notification to my users if they installed my app. After registering their phone number, their SMS Alert will be switched into the new alert system.

The problem is that some old-school users prefer SMS rather than push notifications. They downloaded the app and registered their phone number. Then they found their phone doesn't have a 3G data plan. They deleted the app without un-registering their phone number.

My new system has no idea who deleted the app without unregistering the phone number. All serious alert messages are still sent to the nonexistent app on their phones.

Is there any way to detect that a user has deleted my app?

Recapture

Answer 1

APNS has a feedback service where Apple reports any device token that is no longer active on the users device. You are required by Apple to check the tokens from the feedback service and stop sending pushes to those devices.

You can use this same information to automatically move the user back to SMS. Just tie the device token to the phone number in your database. If the token is active, send pushes to it. If it is reported by the feedback service to be in-active, remove it from your records and use the users phone number for SMS again.

Just remember that a device token can become active again, at which point, it will be registered with you through the same mechanism it was the first time. Re-save it with the user and use push again.

Mariannemariano

Installing a new iOS version changes the device token of the device. So server side should handle the case in which the device token of a device changes. – Aphanite