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service-workerprogressive-web-appsweb-pushpush-api

Is it possible to use the new Push Notifications support in Chrome without GCM?

Can I use a push service other than Google's GCM when using the new Push API with service workers?

Solution

  • Today, Chrome is the only browser that supports the standard push API so right now the short answer is No.

    A longer answer involves doing different things for different browsers

    • Safari offers desktop notifications via APNS and a proprietary API
    • Firefox is shipping support for push notifications soon and presumably will use a different push server than GCM.

    So to summarize, it seems that different combinations of Browser/OS will require different push servers. In the future there is an IETF draft (https://datatracker.ietf.org/wg/webpush/documents/) that should mitigate this. There are also companies working on abstracting these problems for a fee. Just search for web push notifications to get a few of them.