Interactive Notifications – Essential Thing for iPhone Users and iOS Developers

04 Nov. 16

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Imagine you are in a middle of replying an important email and you see a pop-up from messenger that you need to reply as well. You will always be in a dilemma of who to reply first; if you want to reply onto a messenger, you would have to leave the email in the midst and switch. I know, notifications are so irritating when we receive it from a telecom company promoting their offerings or an app upgrading notification which no longer exist in our interest list. To delete such notifications or rather, to respond to such notifications, we have to leave the task we were engaged in. How helpful it would be if we were able to react to the notification without leaving your current work! Well it is possible by interactive notifications.

Development Perspective – from traditional static to active and interactive

The initial iPhones provided a modal alerts for few built-in apps. But, with the development of new features in the apps itself, Apple inc., invaded over this customary notification to give the users the benefit of prioritizing their task.

iOS 3 – They implemented push notifications with iOS 3. This was a conventional old school notification system, allowing users to be alert on every notification.

iOS 5 – With the launch of iOS 5, they debuted push notifications with elegant alert features that also allows to silent the notifications for alarm or some in-built apps.

iOS 8 – Apple has added support for interactive notifications to all of the built-in iOS 8 apps. However, for app store apps, developers will need to add support as well.

iOS developers can implement interactive notifications by defining ‘actions’ with the notifications generated by the apps.

For App Store apps to have interactive notifications, developers will need to add support as well. For example, a social networking app could have an actions like ‘Post’, ‘Like’, ‘Share’, ‘Reply’ and ‘ View’. However, developers can add two to four actions within iOS 8 app store apps. This would make the user’s job to respond to that notification easy.

User perspective on interactive notifications

Users can respond to a notification even while the screen lock is on by interactive notifications. Here’s how:

If you are on a home screen or on any other app , simply swipe down on the notification banner with the pull bar when a notification pops in.
Tap on any button that contains an action you want to perform. The available buttons and actions will vary depending on what app you receive a notification from. For example, if the notification is for WhatsApp, the action would be to reply, for email notifications, you will be asked to reply or archive.

That simple! You can keep on doing whatever you were after taking an action for a notification.

LetsNurture has experience of crafting apps that enables interactive solutions for your applications and websites. Email us now to know more about it – info@letsnurture.com

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