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I know this question can sound a bit strange, but I want to ask this anyway (feel free to downvote): is it possible to send push notifications to an iOS device without connecting to an Apple server? My idea is to send a push from my private server, not Apple's. Is this possible?

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Info from developer.apple.com

Remote notifications—also known as push notifications—arrive from outside a device or a Mac. They originate on a remote server—the app’s provider—and are pushed to apps on devices (via the Apple Push Notification service) when there are messages to see or data to download.

There is no way to do it without using Apple Push Notification System (apns).

Юрий Карцев
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    Local notifications may be useful to you https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/NetworkingInternet/Conceptual/RemoteNotificationsPG/Chapters/WhatAreRemoteNotif.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40008194-CH102-SW1 – Юрий Карцев Apr 21 '15 at 07:06
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Well, the general answer would be - no.
It is not possible due to Apple's restrictions.

There may be different providers to an APN, but as the documentation suggests, there has to be a direct connection to an APN.

For more informations, please check out Apple's Documentation on Apple Push Notification Service.

However, I found this post where a user suggests using a service called Urban Airship - I have not tried this myself, so I don't know if and how it would work, but you may check it out :)

Community
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Fengson
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  • I found parse.com too: my opinion is that they add another level, your app bypasses the APNS but they connect to APNS –  Apr 21 '15 at 07:09
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    I updated the link to Urban Airship to take you directly to the Push Notification section. I was just about to mention Parse, too. This would make a perfect sense for them to add another layer to make the process simple for the user, yet still use APNs themselves. This may or may not be what you want, though. – Fengson Apr 21 '15 at 07:16
  • Urban Airship indeed still uses APNs to deliver notifications. – Elad Nava Feb 03 '20 at 22:36