Sending push notifications to iOS without relying on a native app has already become a mature option. Last year Apple extended the standard Web Push with Declarative Web Push, which finally makes the whole thing make sense. (It's handled natively by WebKit rather than driven by JavaScript, which improves push reliability and privacy, much like the native push notification model.)
Kukuroo uses Cloudflare Workers so that end devices can subscribe to push notifications and relay push requests to the Worker, which signs and delivers them. I personally found it genuinely useful and full of potential, so I open sourced it: kukuroo.cc
Requirements:
Safari on iOS and macOS only (though seriously, who receives push notifications on macOS?) The web page that receives the notifications has to be added to the Home Screen A Cloudflare account. Push notifications and lightweight serverless functions are a perfect match
The might have fixed some issues but the fact that it is only available for homescreen websites and that the link to add them there is buried in the UI is very stupid imho.
> the fact that it is only available for homescreen websites and that the link to add them there is buried in the UI is very stupid imho
Quite the opposite. They know exactly what they are doing.
Don’t forget that originally Apple was going to make all apps on iOS be web apps. Then they came up with having native apps and the App Store and taking a 20% cut of app sales and IAP. Which made them a boatload of money.
It is only very reluctantly that they allow us to add websites to home screen.
Meanwhile, allowing only websites on home screen to push notifications rather than any random site actually does make sense. I’d probably get rid of my iPhone on the spot if every shit site I visit suddenly started pushing notifications to my phone. And if the sites could, the sites would. Just like websites abuse every other mechanism available to wring as many views and ad impressions as they can out of their visitors.
> …the link to add them there is buried in the UI…
It's a standard "Send To" option (the "buried" option you refer to?), but PWAs can also use SFAddToHomeScreenActivityItem.
agree ++
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