Sending Push Messages

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Options for Sending Push Notifications

This page explains how to send push notifications from the OneSignal Dashboard. For other options to send push see:

• API Create Notification Reference
• Automated Messages
• Zapier Integration
• Mobile SDK PostNotification method, see Mobile SDK Reference

Messages > New Push

Step 1. Audience

There are two options for selecting which devices are eligible to receive notifications.

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Segments can be Edited

Any selected segments can be edited and new segments can be created on the fly.

Step 2. Message

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Notification Appearance Guide

Details on Character Limits, Emoji Support and more in the Push Notification Guide.

Sending to Test Devices

If you set test devices use the Send To Test Device button. Test Messages will be available in Delivery tab > Source: Test Messages.

Platform Settings

Custom features available by platform.
Each Platform can be disabled (no push sent to those devices) by toggling the platform switch on/off

iOS Options

Android/Huawei Options

Web Options

Certain browsers have limited features. Most features are Chrome only.

Advanced Settings

Step 3. Scheduling

You can schedule a notification up to 30 days in advance.

The OneSignal Dashboard detects timezone according to your Operating Systems time.

Selecting Begin sending at a particular time will allow you to set when the notifications will start to be sent. That time is displayed on the bottom right circled in red in the image.

Notifications will be delivered to users based on the Per-User Optimization selection.

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Per-User Optimization Limitation with Throttling

If you selected the Throttling option, then Intelligent Delivery and Timezone sending will be ignored.

Message Throttling takes precedence over Intelligent Delivery and Timezone sending.

Intelligent Delivery

Intelligent Delivery is a unique feature of OneSignal that optimizes notification delivery time based on when each user most frequently access your app or website and is the best way to optimize notification open rates.

Each time a device accesses your website or mobile app with our SDK active, our SDK tracks their Last Session and notes the hours in which these devices most commonly return. This is based on up to a 3 month rolling average of a user's past actions.

With Intelligent Delivery, each user will receive your notification within 24 hours of you initiating delivery. For example, you sent a message at 7 PM and the user is most likely to open the app/site at 1 PM, the notification will be delivered 18 hours later (at 1 PM the following day). If your notification is very time-sensitive we instead recommend either Sending Immediately (which initiates delivery right away to all users, regardless of their activity or timezone) or Time Zone optimization (to deliver at the same time across user timezones).

Optimize by the user time zone

Once you schedule the notification to go out, you can set the delivery based on each device's set timezone. This is based on the device's settings.

So if you want a notification to be delivered to all your users in different timezones at 1PM for example, you can do this with OneSignal!

Keep in mind that if a timezone has already passed when you start sending this notification, they will get the notification at the set timezone, the next day. So it is important to make sure you start sending 24 hours before

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FAQ

How do I send a notification to a single user?

If you're looking to send notifications to a specific user device:

1. Get the user's userId/playerId with the getUserIds method on the Web Push SDK or getPermissionSubscriptionState method on the Mobile SDK you are using.
You can also send OneSignal your own unique user ids as "external_user_ids" using our setExternalUserId method on all our SDKs.

• For testing you can use the 'Player ID' shown in Audience > All Users (you can force kill your app and open it again to bring your device to the top of the list.)

2. You can use this user id while in the app to send with our postNotification method and/or we recommend saving this id to your database. More in our Internal Database, DMP, & CRM guide.

3. Set include_player_ids (or include_external_user_ids) to the userId on the PostNotification SDK method or on the Create notification POST REST API call.

More details can be found in our User-User Messages or Transactional Messages guides.

How long can notifications be?

See Concepts: Appearance.

How to schedule recurring notifications?

Using the above steps, you can setup recurring notifications ahead of time. One at a time.
It is better to use our OneSignal API for this, but this is still only one at a time.

You can also setup Automated Messages but there is no guarantee on when exactly the user will receive them.

Another option you have is to use the Zapier | OneSignal integration.

Can notifications get re-ordered with the Intelligent Delivery Option?

Yes, if you send multiple notifications with Intelligent Delivery that should be delivered on the same day, then users may get the notifications in different orders.

This is due to how our SDK interprets the rolling average of a user's predicted-active time on your site or app.

For example, if my current predicted-active time is 3:00pm and you send notification1 to me with Intelligent delivery. Our system will set this notification to be received by me around 3:00 pm.

If I visit your site or app at 2:00 pm. My predicted-active time may now change to an earlier time, so notification2 may be received before notification1.

How can I use Additional Data?

OneSignal allows up to 2048 bytes of data to be passed within the Additional Data or API data parameter of a notification.

This is generally used for Deep Linking or passing data into the push to run code upon receipt using our SDK Handle Notification Methods.

When using the Dashboard to send the push, this can only take key: value pairs of data. To send nested JSON object as a value, you would need to use our API Create Notification POST call.