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Comment by londons_explore | Hacker News Reader

All major Web browsers on Android and iOS provide push notifications to websites (if granted permission).

Most webpages use it for spammy notifications of little value to most users sadly...

> All major Web browsers on Android and iOS provide push notifications to websites

No browsers on iOS allow push notifications on websites. https://onesignal.com/blog/the-state-of-ios-web-push-in-2020...

That is good news. Such a user hostile idea so hopefully it never comes.

I disagree. I'm currently building a live webapp, and all of my users want to receive notifications when shows are going to start, so they don't miss anything. Since WebPush is pretty much unusable (unsupported on iOS, useless on Android) I had to resort to sending SMS to each of my users, which is expensive and a worse experience.

Just because the API is often used for evil, it doesn't mean that the API itself is hostile. I can think of many usecases where a properly functioning web push notification API would be desirable - the unfortunate truth is that the current implementation makes it useless for most real world scenarios.

Whats wrong with email?

Most users don't receive timely push notifications when an email is received. Especially in the case of Gmail, which is the most popular email provider with Android users, since they employ an algorithm to automatically categorize emails in categories such as "promotions" and "updates" - which causes those emails to not trigger a notification.

Emails could be used to send users of up-coming shows ahead of time. I turn off notifications for everything (except SMS and alarms) as I frequently am not in a position to drop everything and do something just because I receive a notification. I just catch up on my messages every now and then and from my emails I can schedule any important alarms for times I need to do something or add things to my calendar so I know what's happening. Instant notification are a huge disruption to my workflow and rarely benefit me.

Well yeah, all users can see the schedule at any time by visiting the website. They still want a notification to serve as a reminder, because many people are forgetful, especially new users who haven't gotten used to the schedule yet.

Sorry, I misunderstood. I thought you were notifying them of shows in advance, but I see now it's meant to be a "the show is about to start now" notification. I see why mail wouldn't work for that.

I'm curious if there are any good use cases for browser push notifications out side of chat web apps. I keep meaning to disable them globally because I can't think of any.

I know websites that can send a push notification when a product that is out-of-stock is restocked.

I'm sure I've also been on sports websites that allow you to receive a notification when a goal is scored in a particular match.

When I run a query at work in my browser, it uses that API to give me a push notification when it finishes. I like it a lot!

I also get push notifications when meetings are about to start.

I mean web apps are apps, so same as anything you’d want a push notification for via an installed app. E.g. an email webapp might send you a notification when you get a new email, a hacker news webapp might send you one when you get a reply, etc. It’s pretty obvious

Push notifications aren't just for humans. They can be used to push messages to service workers that for instance, might sync local data for an offline mail client. This is a really big deal for PWAs. PWAs are a lot like electron, except they do not include a separate browser runtime, they just use your existing browser, and are managed by the browser.

I am curious on the "most" part. Is there any other use? Push notifications, by and large, are a vapid wasteland of wasted time, in my experience.

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