flutter_local_notifications

pub package Build Status

A cross platform plugin for displaying local notifications.

Important

Given how both quickly both Flutter ecosystem and Android ecosystem evolves, the minimum Flutter SDK version will occasionally be bumped to make it easier to maintain the plugin. Note that official plugins already follow a similar approach. This is being called out as if this affects your applications (e.g. supported OS versions) then you may need to consider maintaining your own fork in the future

Table of contents

📱 Supported platforms

Note: the plugin requires Flutter SDK 3.13 at a minimum. The list of support platforms for Flutter 3.13 itself can be found here

✨ Features

  • Mockable (plugin and API methods aren't static)
  • Display basic notifications
  • Scheduling when notifications should appear
  • Periodically show a notification (interval based)
  • Schedule a notification to be shown daily at a specified time
  • Schedule a notification to be shown weekly on a specified day and time
  • Retrieve a list of pending notification requests that have been scheduled to be shown in the future
  • Cancelling/removing notification by id or all of them
  • Specify a custom notification sound
  • Ability to handle when a user has tapped on a notification, when the app is in the foreground, background or is terminated
  • Determine if an app was launched due to tapping on a notification
  • Android Request permission to show notifications
  • Android Configuring the importance level
  • Android Configuring the priority
  • Android Customising the vibration pattern for notifications
  • Android Configure the default icon for all notifications
  • Android Configure the icon for each notification (overrides the default when specified)
  • Android Configure the large icon for each notification. The icon can be a drawable or a file on the device
  • Android Formatting notification content via HTML markup
  • Android Support for the following notification styles
    • Big picture
    • Big text
    • Inbox
    • Messaging
    • Media
      • While media playback control using a MediaSession.Token is not supported, with this style you let Android treat the largeIcon bitmap as album artwork
  • Android Group notifications
  • Android Show progress notifications
  • Android Configure notification visibility on the lockscreen
  • Android Ability to create and delete notification channels
  • Android Retrieve the list of active notifications
  • Android Full-screen intent notifications
  • Android Start a foreground service
  • Android Ability to check if notifications are enabled
  • iOS (all supported versions) & macOS 10.14+ Request notification permissions and customise the permissions being requested around displaying notifications
  • iOS 10 or newer and macOS 10.14 or newer Display notifications with attachments
  • iOS and macOS 10.14 or newer Ability to check if notifications are enabled with specific type check
  • Linux Ability to to use themed/Flutter Assets icons and sound
  • Linux Ability to to set the category
  • Linux Configuring the urgency
  • Linux Configuring the timeout (depends on system implementation)
  • Linux Ability to set custom notification location (depends on system implementation)
  • Linux Ability to set custom hints
  • Linux Ability to suppress sound
  • Linux Resident and transient notifications

⚠ Caveats and limitations

The cross-platform facing API exposed by the FlutterLocalNotificationsPlugin class doesn't expose platform-specific methods as its goal is to provide an abstraction for all platforms. As such, platform-specific configuration is passed in as data. There are platform-specific implementations of the plugin that can be obtained by calling the resolvePlatformSpecificImplementation. An example of using this is provided in the section on requesting permissions on iOS. In spite of this, there may still be gaps that don't cover your use case and don't make sense to add as they don't fit with the plugin's architecture or goals. Developers can fork or maintain their own code for showing notifications in these situations.

Compatibility with firebase_messaging

Previously, there were issues that prevented this plugin working properly with the firebase_messaging plugin. This meant that callbacks from each plugin might not be invoked. This has been resolved since version 6.0.13 of the firebase_messaging plugin so please make sure you are using more recent versions of the firebase_messaging plugin and follow the steps covered in firebase_messaging's readme file located here

Scheduled Android notifications

Some Android OEMs have their own customised Android OS that can prevent applications from running in the background. Consequently, scheduled notifications may not work when the application is in the background on certain devices (e.g. by Xiaomi, Huawei). If you experience problems like this then this would be the reason why. As it's a restriction imposed by the OS, this is not something that can be resolved by the plugin. Some devices may have setting that lets users control which applications run in the background. The steps for these can vary but it is still up to the users of your application to do given it's a setting on the phone itself. The site https://dontkillmyapp.com provides details on how to do this for various devices.

It has been reported that Samsung's implementation of Android has imposed a maximum of 500 alarms that can be scheduled via the Alarm Manager API and exceptions can occur when going over the limit.

iOS pending notifications limit

There is a limit imposed by iOS where it will only keep the 64 notifications that were last set on any iOS versions newer than 9. On iOS versions 9 and older, the 64 notifications that fire soonest are kept. See here for more details.

Scheduled notifications and daylight saving time

The notification APIs used on iOS versions older than 10 (aka the UILocalNotification APIs) have limited supported for time zones.

Updating application badge

This plugin doesn't provide APIs for directly setting the badge count for your application. If you need this for your application, there are other plugins available, such as the flutter_app_badger plugin.

Custom notification sounds

iOS and macOS restrictions apply (e.g. supported file formats).

macOS differences

Due to limitations currently within the macOS Flutter engine, getNotificationAppLaunchDetails will return null on macOS versions older than 10.14. These limitations will mean that conflicts may occur when using this plugin with other notification plugins (e.g. for push notifications).

The schedule, showDailyAtTime and showWeeklyAtDayAndTime methods that were implemented before macOS support was added and have been marked as deprecated aren't implemented on macOS.

Linux limitations

Capabilities depend on the system notification server implementation, therefore, not all features listed in LinuxNotificationDetails may be supported. One of the ways to check some capabilities is to call the LinuxFlutterLocalNotificationsPlugin.getCapabilities() method.

Scheduled/pending notifications is currently not supported due to the lack of a scheduler API.

The onDidReceiveNotificationResponse callback runs on the main isolate of the running application and cannot be launched in the background if the application is not running. To respond to notification after the application is terminated, your application should be registered as DBus activatable (please see DBusApplicationLaunching for more information), and register action before activating the application. This is difficult to do in a plugin because plugins instantiate during application activation, so getNotificationAppLaunchDetails can't be implemented without changing the main user application.

Notification payload

Due to some limitations on iOS with how it treats null values in dictionaries, a null notification payload is coalesced to an empty string behind the scenes on all platforms for consistency.

📷 Screenshots

Platform Screenshot
Android
iOS
macOS
Linux

👏 Acknowledgements

  • Javier Lecuona for submitting the PR that added the ability to have notifications shown daily
  • Jeff Scaturro for submitting the PR to fix the iOS issue around showing daily and weekly notifications and migrating the plugin to AndroidX
  • Ian Cavanaugh for helping create a sample to reproduce the problem reported in issue #88
  • Zhang Jing for adding 'ticker' support for Android notifications
  • ...and everyone else for their contributions. They are greatly appreciated

🔧 Android Setup

Before proceeding, please make sure you are using the latest version of the plugin. Note that there have been differences in the setup depending on the version of the plugin used. Please make use of the release tags to refer back to older versions of readme. Applications that schedule notifications should pay close attention to the AndroidManifest.xml setup section of the readme since Android 14 has brought about some behavioural changes.

Gradle setup

Version 10+ on the plugin now relies on desugaring to support scheduled notifications with backwards compatibility on older versions of Android. Developers will need to update their application's Gradle file at android/app/build.gradle. Please see the link on desugaring for details but the main parts needed in this Gradle file would be

android {
  defaultConfig {
    multiDexEnabled true
  }

  compileOptions {
    // Flag to enable support for the new language APIs
    coreLibraryDesugaringEnabled true
    // Sets Java compatibility to Java 8
    sourceCompatibility JavaVersion.VERSION_1_8
    targetCompatibility JavaVersion.VERSION_1_8
  }
}

dependencies {
  coreLibraryDesugaring 'com.android.tools:desugar_jdk_libs:1.2.2'
}

Note that the plugin uses Android Gradle plugin (AGP) 7.3.1 to leverage this functionality so to err on the safe side, applications should aim to use the same version at a minimum. Using a higher version is also needed as at point, Android Studio bundled a newer version of the Java SDK that will only work with Gradle 7.3 or higher (see here for more details). For a Flutter app using the legacy apply script syntax, this is specified in android/build.gradle and the main parts would look similar to the following

buildscript {
   ...

    dependencies {
        classpath 'com.android.tools.build:gradle:7.3.1'
        ...
    }

If your app is using the new declarative Plugin DSL syntax, please refer to the Flutter documentation here where they document where the AGP version can be specified

There have been reports that enabling desugaring may result in a Flutter apps crashing on Android 12L and above. This would be an issue with Flutter itself, not the plugin. One possible fix is adding the WindowManager library as a dependency:

dependencies {
    implementation 'androidx.window:window:1.0.0'
    implementation 'androidx.window:window-java:1.0.0'
    ...
}

More information and other proposed solutions can be found in Flutter issue #110658.

The plugin also requires that the compileSdk in your application's Gradle file is set to 34 at a minimum:

android {
    compileSdk 34
    ...
}

AndroidManifest.xml setup

Previously the plugin would specify all the permissions required all of the features that the plugin support in its own AndroidManifest.xml file so that developers wouldn't need to do this in their own app's AndroidManifest.xml file. Since version 16 onwards, the plugin will now only specify the bare minimum and these `POST_NOTIFICATIONS` (https://developer.android.com/reference/android/Manifest.permission#POST_NOTIFICATIONS) and VIBRATE permissions.

For apps that need the following functionality please complete the following in your app's AndroidManifest.xml

  • To schedule notifications the following changes are needed
    • Specify the appropriate permissions between the <manifest> tags.
      • <uses-permission android:name="android.permission.RECEIVE_BOOT_COMPLETED"/>: this is required so the plugin can known when the device is rebooted. This is required so that the plugin can reschedule notifications upon a reboot
      • If the app requires scheduling notifications with exact timings (aka exact alarms), there are two options since Android 14 brought about behavioural changes (see here for more details)
        • specify <uses-permission android:name="android.permission.SCHEDULE_EXACT_ALARM" /> and call the requestExactAlarmsPermission() exposed by the AndroidFlutterNotificationsPlugin class so that the user can grant the permission via the app or
        • specify <uses-permission android:name="android.permission.USE_EXACT_ALARM" />. Users will not be prompted to grant permission, however as per the official Android documentation on the USE_EXACT_ALARM permission (refer to here and here), this requires the app to target Android 13 (API level 33) or higher and could be subject to approval and auditing by the app store(s) used to publish theapp
    • Specify the following between the <application> tags so that the plugin can actually show the scheduled notification(s)
    <receiver android:exported="false" android:name="com.dexterous.flutterlocalnotifications.ScheduledNotificationReceiver" />
<receiver android:exported="false" android:name="com.dexterous.flutterlocalnotifications.ScheduledNotificationBootReceiver">
    <intent-filter>
        <action android:name="android.intent.action.BOOT_COMPLETED"/>
        <action android:name="android.intent.action.MY_PACKAGE_REPLACED"/>
        <action android:name="android.intent.action.QUICKBOOT_POWERON" />
        <action android:name="com.htc.intent.action.QUICKBOOT_POWERON"/>
    </intent-filter>
</receiver>
  • To use full-screen intent notifications, specify the <uses-permission android:name="android.permission.USE_FULL_SCREEN_INTENT" /> permission between the <manifest> tags. Developers will also need to follow the instructions documented here
  • To use notification actions, specify <receiver android:exported="false" android:name="com.dexterous.flutterlocalnotifications.ActionBroadcastReceiver" /> between the <application> tags so that the plugin can process the actions and trigger the appropriate callback(s)
  • To use foreground services the following changes are needed
    • Request the appropriate permissions
    • Declare the service exposed by the plugin by adding the following between <application> tags. An example of what this looks like is below where <foreground service types> should be replaced with the foreground service type(s) your app needs. If you want your foreground service to be stopped if your app is stopped, set android:stopWithTask to true
     <service
        android:name="com.dexterous.flutterlocalnotifications.ForegroundService"        
        android:exported="false"
        android:stopWithTask="false"
        android:foregroundServiceType="<foreground service types>">

Developers can refer to the example app's AndroidManifest.xml to help see what the end result may look like. Do note that the example app covers all the plugin's supported functionality so will request more permissions than your own app may need

Requesting permissions on Android 13 or higher

From Android 13 (API level 33) onwards, apps now have the ability to display a prompt where users can decide if they want to grant an app permission to show notifications. For further reading on this matter read https://developer.android.com/guide/topics/ui/notifiers/notification-permission. To support this applications need target their application to Android 13 or higher and the compile SDK version needs to be at least 33 (Android 13). For example, to target Android 13, update your app's build.gradle file to have a targetSdkVersion of 33. Applications can then call the following code to request the permission where the requestPermission method is associated with the AndroidFlutterLocalNotificationsPlugin class (i.e. the Android implementation of the plugin)

FlutterLocalNotificationsPlugin flutterLocalNotificationsPlugin =
        FlutterLocalNotificationsPlugin();
flutterLocalNotificationsPlugin.resolvePlatformSpecificImplementation<
    AndroidFlutterLocalNotificationsPlugin>().requestNotificationsPermission();

Custom notification icons and sounds

Notification icons should be added as a drawable resource. The example project/code shows how to set default icon for all notifications and how to specify one for each notification. It is possible to use launcher icon/mipmap and this by default is @mipmap/ic_launcher in the Android manifest and can be passed AndroidInitializationSettings constructor. However, the offical Android guidance is that you should use drawable resources. Custom notification sounds should be added as a raw resource and the sample illustrates how to play a notification with a custom sound. Refer to the following links around Android resources and notification icons.

When specifying the large icon bitmap or big picture bitmap (associated with the big picture style), bitmaps can be either a drawable resource or file on the device. This is specified via a single property (e.g. the largeIcon property associated with the AndroidNotificationDetails class) where a value that is an instance of the DrawableResourceAndroidBitmap means the bitmap should be loaded from an drawable resource. If this is an instance of the FilePathAndroidBitmap, this indicates it should be loaded from a file referred to by a given file path.

⚠️ For Android 8.0+, sounds and vibrations are associated with notification channels and can only be configured when they are first created. Showing/scheduling a notification will create a channel with the specified id if it doesn't exist already. If another notification specifies the same channel id but tries to specify another sound or vibration pattern then nothing occurs.

Full-screen intent notifications

If your application needs the ability to schedule full-screen intent notifications, add the following attributes to the activity you're opening. For a Flutter application, there is typically only one activity extends from FlutterActivity. These attributes ensure the screen turns on and shows when the device is locked.

<activity
    android:showWhenLocked="true"
    android:turnScreenOn="true">

For reference, the example app's AndroidManifest.xml file can be found here.

Note that when a full-screen intent notification actually occurs (as opposed to a heads-up notification that the system may decide should occur), the plugin will act as though the user has tapped on a notification so handle those the same way (e.g. onDidReceiveNotificationResponse callback) to display the appropriate page for your application.

Developers should also be across Google's requirements on using full-screen intents. Please refer to their documentation here for more information. Should you app need request permissions, the AndroidFlutterNotificationsPlugin class exposes the requestFullScreenIntentPermission() method that can be used to do so.

Release build configuration

Before creating the release build of your app (which is the default setting when building an APK or app bundle) you will need to customise your ProGuard configuration file as per this link. Rules specific to the GSON dependency being used by the plugin will need to be added. These rules can be found here. Whilst the example app has a Proguard rules (proguard-rules.pro) here, it is recommended that developers refer to the rules on the GSON repository in case they get updated over time.

⚠️ Ensure that you have configured the resources that should be kept so that resources like your notification icons aren't discarded by the R8 compiler by following the instructions here. If you have chosen to use @mipmap/ic_launcher as the notification icon (against the official Android guidance), be sure to include this in the keep.xml file. If you fail to do this, notifications might be broken. In the worst case they will never show, instead silently failing when the system looks for a resource that has been removed. If they do still show, you might not see the icon you specified. The configuration used by the example app can be found here where it is specifying that all drawable resources should be kept, as well as the file used to play a custom notification sound (sound file is located here).

🔧 iOS setup

General setup

Add the following lines to the application method in the AppDelegate.m/AppDelegate.swift file of your iOS project. See an example of this here.

Objective-C:

if (@available(iOS 10.0, *)) {
  [UNUserNotificationCenter currentNotificationCenter].delegate = (id<UNUserNotificationCenterDelegate>) self;
}

Swift:

if #available(iOS 10.0, *) {
  UNUserNotificationCenter.current().delegate = self as? UNUserNotificationCenterDelegate
}

Handling notifications whilst the app is in the foreground

By design, iOS applications do not display notifications while the app is in the foreground unless configured to do so.

For iOS 10+, use the presentation options to control the behaviour for when a notification is triggered while the app is in the foreground. The default settings of the plugin will configure these such that a notification will be displayed when the app is in the foreground.

❓ Usage

Before going on to copy-paste the code snippets in this section, double-check you have configured your application correctly. If you encounter any issues please refer to the API docs and the sample code in the example directory before opening a request on Github.

Notification Actions

Notifications can now contain actions but note that on Apple's platforms, these work only on iOS 10 or newer and macOS 10.14 or newer. On macOS and Linux (see Linux limitations chapter), these will only run on the main isolate by calling the onDidReceiveNotificationResponse callback. On iOS and Android, these will run on the main isolate by calling the onDidReceiveNotificationResponse callback if the configuration has specified that the app/user interface should be shown i.e. by specifying the DarwinNotificationActionOption.foreground option on iOS and the showsUserInterface property on Android. If they haven't, then these actions may be selected by the user when an app is sleeping or terminated and will wake up your app. However, it may not wake up the user-visible part of your App; but only the part of it which runs in the background. This is done by spawning a background isolate.

This plugin contains handlers for iOS & Android to handle these background isolate cases and will allow you to specify a Dart entry point (a function). When the user selects a action, the plugin will start a separate Flutter Engine which will then invoke the onDidReceiveBackgroundNotificationResponse callback

Configuration:

Android and Linux do not require any configuration.

iOS will require a few steps:

Adjust AppDelegate.m and set the plugin registrant callback:

If you're using Objective-C, add this function anywhere in AppDelegate.m:

// This is required for calling FlutterLocalNotificationsPlugin.setPluginRegistrantCallback method.
#import <FlutterLocalNotificationsPlugin.h>
...
...
void registerPlugins(NSObject<FlutterPluginRegistry>* registry) {
    [GeneratedPluginRegistrant registerWithRegistry:registry];
}

then extend didFinishLaunchingWithOptions and register the callback:

- (BOOL)application:(UIApplication *)application didFinishLaunchingWithOptions:(NSDictionary *)launchOptions {
    [GeneratedPluginRegistrant registerWithRegistry:self];

    // Add this method    
    [FlutterLocalNotificationsPlugin setPluginRegistrantCallback:registerPlugins];
}

For Swift, open the AppDelegate.swift and update the didFinishLaunchingWithOptions as follows where the commented code indicates the code to add in and why

import UIKit
import Flutter
// This is required for calling FlutterLocalNotificationsPlugin.setPluginRegistrantCallback method.
import flutter_local_notifications

@UIApplicationMain
override func application(
  _ application: UIApplication,
  didFinishLaunchingWithOptions launchOptions: [UIApplication.LaunchOptionsKey: Any]?
  ) -> Bool {
  // This is required to make any communication available in the action isolate.
  FlutterLocalNotificationsPlugin.setPluginRegistrantCallback { (registry) in
    GeneratedPluginRegistrant.register(with: registry)
  }

  ...
  return super.application(application, didFinishLaunchingWithOptions: launchOptions)
}

On iOS/macOS, notification actions need to be configured before the app is started using the initialize method

final DarwinInitializationSettings initializationSettingsDarwin = DarwinInitializationSettings(
    // ...
    notificationCategories: [
      DarwinNotificationCategory(
        'demoCategory',
        actions: <DarwinNotificationAction>[
            DarwinNotificationAction.plain('id_1', 'Action 1'),
            DarwinNotificationAction.plain(
            'id_2',
            'Action 2',
            options: <DarwinNotificationActionOption>{
                DarwinNotificationActionOption.destructive,
            },
            ),
            DarwinNotificationAction.plain(
            'id_3',
            'Action 3',
            options: <DarwinNotificationActionOption>{
                DarwinNotificationActionOption.foreground,
            },
            ),
        ],
        options: <DarwinNotificationCategoryOption>{
            DarwinNotificationCategoryOption.hiddenPreviewShowTitle,
        },
    )
],

On iOS/macOS, the notification category will define which actions are availble. On Android and Linux, you can put the actions directly in the AndroidNotificationDetails and LinuxNotificationDetails classes.

Usage:

You need to configure a top level or static method which will handle the action:

@pragma('vm:entry-point')
void notificationTapBackground(NotificationResponse notificationResponse) {
  // handle action
}

Specify this function as a parameter in the initialize method of this plugin:

await flutterLocalNotificationsPlugin.initialize(
    initializationSettings,
    onDidReceiveNotificationResponse: (NotificationResponse notificationResponse) async {
        // ...
    },
    onDidReceiveBackgroundNotificationResponse: notificationTapBackground,
);

Remember this function runs (except Linux) in a separate isolate! This function also requires the @pragma('vm:entry-point') annotation to ensure that tree-shaking doesn't remove the code since it would be invoked on the native side. See here for official documentation on the annotation.

Developers should also note that whilst accessing plugins will work, on Android there is no access to the Activity context. This means some plugins (like url_launcher) will require additional flags to start the main Activity again.

Specifying actions on notifications:

The notification actions are platform specific and you have to specify them differently for each platform.

On iOS/macOS, the actions are defined on a category, please see the configuration section for details.

On Android and Linux, the actions are configured directly on the notification.

Future<void> _showNotificationWithActions() async {
  const AndroidNotificationDetails androidNotificationDetails =
      AndroidNotificationDetails(
    '...',
    '...',
    '...',
    actions: <AndroidNotificationAction>[
      AndroidNotificationAction('id_1', 'Action 1'),
      AndroidNotificationAction('id_2', 'Action 2'),
      AndroidNotificationAction('id_3', 'Action 3'),
    ],
  );
  const NotificationDetails notificationDetails =
      NotificationDetails(android: androidNotificationDetails);
  await flutterLocalNotificationsPlugin.show(
      0, '...', '...', notificationDetails);
}

Each notification will have a internal ID & an public action title.

Example app

The example directory has a sample application that demonstrates the features of this plugin.

API reference

Checkout the lovely API documentation generated by pub.

Initialisation

The first step is to create a new instance of the plugin class and then initialise it with the settings to use for each platform

FlutterLocalNotificationsPlugin flutterLocalNotificationsPlugin =
    FlutterLocalNotificationsPlugin();
// initialise the plugin. app_icon needs to be a added as a drawable resource to the Android head project
const AndroidInitializationSettings initializationSettingsAndroid =
    AndroidInitializationSettings('app_icon');
final DarwinInitializationSettings initializationSettingsDarwin =
    DarwinInitializationSettings();
final LinuxInitializationSettings initializationSettingsLinux =
    LinuxInitializationSettings(
        defaultActionName: 'Open notification');
final InitializationSettings initializationSettings = InitializationSettings(
    android: initializationSettingsAndroid,
    iOS: initializationSettingsDarwin,
    macOS: initializationSettingsDarwin,
    linux: initializationSettingsLinux);
await flutterLocalNotificationsPlugin.initialize(initializationSettings,
    onDidReceiveNotificationResponse: onDidReceiveNotificationResponse);

Initialisation can be done in the main function of your application or can be done within the first page shown in your app. Developers can refer to the example app that has code for the initialising within the main function. The code above has been simplified for explaining the concepts. Here we have specified the default icon to use for notifications on Android (refer to the Android setup section) and designated the function (onDidReceiveNotificationResponse) that should fire when a notification has been tapped on via the onDidReceiveNotificationResponse callback. Specifying this callback is entirely optional but here it will trigger navigation to another page and display the payload associated with the notification. This callback cannot be used to handle when a notification launched an app. Use the getNotificationAppLaunchDetails method when the app starts if you need to handle when a notification triggering the launch for an app e.g. change the home route of the app for deep-linking.

Note that all settings are nullable, because we don't want to force developers so specify settings for platforms they don't target. You will get a runtime ArgumentError Exception if you forgot to pass the settings for the platform you target.

void onDidReceiveNotificationResponse(NotificationResponse notificationResponse) async {
    final String? payload = notificationResponse.payload;
    if (notificationResponse.payload != null) {
      debugPrint('notification payload: $payload');
    }
    await Navigator.push(
      context,
      MaterialPageRoute<void>(builder: (context) => SecondScreen(payload)),
    );
}

In the real world, this payload could represent the id of the item you want to display the details of. Once the initialisation is complete, then you can manage the displaying of notifications. Note that this callback is only intended to work when the app is running. For scenarios where your application needs to handle when a notification launched the app refer to here

The DarwinInitializationSettings class provides default settings on how the notification be presented when it is triggered and the application is in the foreground on iOS/macOS. There are optional named parameters that can be modified to suit your application's purposes. Here, it is omitted and the default values for these named properties is set such that all presentation options (alert, sound, badge) are enabled.

The LinuxInitializationSettings class requires a name for the default action that calls the onDidReceiveNotificationResponse callback when the notification is clicked.

On iOS and macOS, initialisation may show a prompt to requires users to give the application permission to display notifications (note: permissions don't need to be requested on Android). Depending on when this happens, this may not be the ideal user experience for your application. If so, please refer to the next section on how to work around this.

iOS (all supported versions) and macOS 10.14+ Requesting notification permissions

The constructor for the DarwinInitializationSettings class has three named parameters (requestSoundPermission, requestBadgePermission and requestAlertPermission) that controls which permissions are being requested. If you want to request permissions at a later point in your application on iOS, set all of the above to false when initialising the plugin.

  FlutterLocalNotificationsPlugin flutterLocalNotificationsPlugin =
      FlutterLocalNotificationsPlugin();
  const AndroidInitializationSettings initializationSettingsAndroid =
      AndroidInitializationSettings('app_icon');
  final DarwinInitializationSettings initializationSettingsDarwin =
      DarwinInitializationSettings(
    requestSoundPermission: false,
    requestBadgePermission: false,
    requestAlertPermission: false,
  );
  final MacOSInitializationSettings initializationSettingsMacOS =
      MacOSInitializationSettings(
          requestAlertPermission: false,
          requestBadgePermission: false,
          requestSoundPermission: false);
  final LinuxInitializationSettings initializationSettingsLinux =
    LinuxInitializationSettings(
        defaultActionName: 'Open notification');
  final InitializationSettings initializationSettings = InitializationSettings(
      android: initializationSettingsAndroid,
      iOS: initializationSettingsDarwin,
      macOS: initializationSettingsDarwin,
      linux: initializationSettingsLinux);
  await flutterLocalNotificationsPlugin.initialize(initializationSettings,
      onDidReceiveNotificationResponse: onDidReceiveNotificationResponse);

Then call the requestPermissions method with desired permissions at the appropriate point in your application

For iOS:

final bool result = await flutterLocalNotificationsPlugin
    .resolvePlatformSpecificImplementation<
        IOSFlutterLocalNotificationsPlugin>()
    ?.requestPermissions(
    alert: true,
    badge: true,
    sound: true,
    );

For macOS:

final bool result = await flutterLocalNotificationsPlugin
    .resolvePlatformSpecificImplementation<
        MacOSFlutterLocalNotificationsPlugin>()
    ?.requestPermissions(
    alert: true,
    badge: true,
    sound: true,
    );

Here the call to flutterLocalNotificationsPlugin.resolvePlatformSpecificImplementation<IOSFlutterLocalNotificationsPlugin>() returns the iOS implementation of the plugin that contains APIs specific to iOS if the application is running on iOS. Similarly, the macOS implementation is returned by calling flutterLocalNotificationsPlugin.resolvePlatformSpecificImplementation<MacOSFlutterLocalNotificationsPlugin>(). The ?. operator is used as the result will be null when run on other platforms. Developers may alternatively choose to guard this call by checking the platform their application is running on.

Displaying a notification

const AndroidNotificationDetails androidNotificationDetails =
    AndroidNotificationDetails('your channel id', 'your channel name',
        channelDescription: 'your channel description',
        importance: Importance.max,
        priority: Priority.high,
        ticker: 'ticker');
const NotificationDetails notificationDetails =
    NotificationDetails(android: androidNotificationDetails);
await flutterLocalNotificationsPlugin.show(
    0, 'plain title', 'plain body', notificationDetails,
    payload: 'item x');

Here, the first argument is the id of notification and is common to all methods that would result in a notification being shown. This is typically set a unique value per notification as using the same id multiple times would result in a notification being updated/overwritten.

The details specific to the Android platform are also specified. This includes the channel details that is required for Android 8.0+. Whilst not shown, it's possible to specify details for iOS and macOS as well using the optional iOS and macOS named parameters if needed. The payload has been specified ('item x'), that will passed back through your application when the user has tapped on a notification. Note that for Android devices that notifications will only in appear in the tray and won't appear as a toast aka heads-up notification unless things like the priority/importance has been set appropriately. Refer to the Android docs (https://developer.android.com/guide/topics/ui/notifiers/notifications.html#Heads-up) for additional information. The "ticker" text is passed here is optional and specific to Android. This allows for text to be shown in the status bar on older versions of Android when the notification is shown.

Scheduling a notification

Starting in version 2.0 of the plugin, scheduling notifications now requires developers to specify a date and time relative to a specific time zone. This is to solve issues with daylight saving time that existed in the schedule method that is now deprecated. A new zonedSchedule method is provided that expects an instance TZDateTime class provided by the timezone package. Even though the timezone package is be a transitive dependency via this plugin, it is recommended based on this lint rule that you also add the timezone package as a direct dependency.

Once the depdendency as been added, usage of the timezone package requires initialisation that is covered in the package's readme. For convenience the following are code snippets used by the example app.

Import the timezone package

import 'package:timezone/data/latest_all.dart' as tz;
import 'package:timezone/timezone.dart' as tz;

Initialise the time zone database

tz.initializeTimeZones();

Once the time zone database has been initialised, developers may optionally want to set a default local location/time zone

tz.setLocalLocation(tz.getLocation(timeZoneName));

The timezone package doesn't provide a way to obtain the current time zone on the device so developers will need to use platform channels or use other packages that may be able to provide the information. flutter_timezone is the current version of the original flutter_native_timezone plugin used in the example app.

Assuming the local location has been set, the zonedSchedule method can then be called in a manner similar to the following code

await flutterLocalNotificationsPlugin.zonedSchedule(
    0,
    'scheduled title',
    'scheduled body',
    tz.TZDateTime.now(tz.local).add(const Duration(seconds: 5)),
    const NotificationDetails(
        android: AndroidNotificationDetails(
            'your channel id', 'your channel name',
            channelDescription: 'your channel description')),
    androidScheduleMode: AndroidScheduleMode.exactAllowWhileIdle,
    uiLocalNotificationDateInterpretation:
        UILocalNotificationDateInterpretation.absoluteTime);

On Android, the androidScheduleMode is used to determine the precision on when the notification would be delivered. In this example, it's been specified that it should appear at the exact time even when the device has entered a low-powered idle mode. Note that this requires that the exact alarm permission has been granted. If it's been revoked then the plugin will log an error message. Note that if the notification was scheduled to be recurring one but the permission had been revoked then it will no be scheduled as well. In either case, this is where developers may choose to schedule inexact notifications instead via the androidScheduleMode parameter.

The uiLocalNotificationDateInterpretation is required as on iOS versions older than 10 as time zone support is limited. This means it's not possible schedule a notification for another time zone and have iOS adjust the time the notification will appear when daylight saving time happens. With this parameter, it is used to determine if the scheduled date should be interpreted as absolute time or wall clock time.

There is an optional matchDateTimeComponents parameter that can be used to schedule a notification to appear on a daily or weekly basis by telling the plugin to match on the time or a combination of day of the week and time respectively.

If you are trying to update your code so it doesn't use the deprecated methods for showing daily or weekly notifications that occur on a specific day of the week then you'll need to perform calculations that would determine the next instance of a date that meets the conditions for your application. See the example application that shows one of the ways that can be done e.g. how schedule a weekly notification to occur on Monday 10:00AM.

Periodically show a notification with a specified interval

const AndroidNotificationDetails androidNotificationDetails =
    AndroidNotificationDetails(
        'repeating channel id', 'repeating channel name',
        channelDescription: 'repeating description');
const NotificationDetails notificationDetails =
    NotificationDetails(android: androidNotificationDetails);
await flutterLocalNotificationsPlugin.periodicallyShow(0, 'repeating title',
    'repeating body', RepeatInterval.everyMinute, notificationDetails,
    androidScheduleMode: AndroidScheduleMode.exactAllowWhileIdle);

Retrieving pending notification requests

final List<PendingNotificationRequest> pendingNotificationRequests =
    await flutterLocalNotificationsPlugin.pendingNotificationRequests();

Retrieving active notifications

final List<ActiveNotification> activeNotifications =
    await flutterLocalNotificationsPlugin.getActiveNotifications();

Note: The API only works for the following operating systems and versions

  • Android 6.0 or newer
  • iOS 10.0 or newer
  • macOS 10.14 or newer

Grouping notifications

iOS

For iOS, you can specify threadIdentifier in DarwinNotificationDetails. Notifications with the same threadIdentifier will get grouped together automatically.

const DarwinNotificationDetails iOSPlatformChannelSpecifics =
    DarwinNotificationDetails(threadIdentifier: 'thread_id');

Android

This is a "translation" of the sample available at https://developer.android.com/training/notify-user/group.html

const String groupKey = 'com.android.example.WORK_EMAIL';
const String groupChannelId = 'grouped channel id';
const String groupChannelName = 'grouped channel name';
const String groupChannelDescription = 'grouped channel description';
// example based on https://developer.android.com/training/notify-user/group.html
const AndroidNotificationDetails firstNotificationAndroidSpecifics =
    AndroidNotificationDetails(groupChannelId, groupChannelName,
        channelDescription: groupChannelDescription,
        importance: Importance.max,
        priority: Priority.high,
        groupKey: groupKey);
const NotificationDetails firstNotificationPlatformSpecifics =
    NotificationDetails(android: firstNotificationAndroidSpecifics);
await flutterLocalNotificationsPlugin.show(1, 'Alex Faarborg',
    'You will not believe...', firstNotificationPlatformSpecifics);
const AndroidNotificationDetails secondNotificationAndroidSpecifics =
    AndroidNotificationDetails(groupChannelId, groupChannelName,
        channelDescription: groupChannelDescription,
        importance: Importance.max,
        priority: Priority.high,
        groupKey: groupKey);
const NotificationDetails secondNotificationPlatformSpecifics =
    NotificationDetails(android: secondNotificationAndroidSpecifics);
await flutterLocalNotificationsPlugin.show(
    2,
    'Jeff Chang',
    'Please join us to celebrate the...',
    secondNotificationPlatformSpecifics);

// Create the summary notification to support older devices that pre-date
/// Android 7.0 (API level 24).
///
/// Recommended to create this regardless as the behaviour may vary as
/// mentioned in https://developer.android.com/training/notify-user/group
const List<String> lines = <String>[
    'Alex Faarborg  Check this out',
    'Jeff Chang    Launch Party'
];
const InboxStyleInformation inboxStyleInformation = InboxStyleInformation(
    lines,
    contentTitle: '2 messages',
    summaryText: 'janedoe@example.com');
const AndroidNotificationDetails androidNotificationDetails =
    AndroidNotificationDetails(groupChannelId, groupChannelName,
        channelDescription: groupChannelDescription,
        styleInformation: inboxStyleInformation,
        groupKey: groupKey,
        setAsGroupSummary: true);
const NotificationDetails notificationDetails =
    NotificationDetails(android: androidNotificationDetails);
await flutterLocalNotificationsPlugin.show(
    3, 'Attention', 'Two messages', notificationDetails);

Cancelling/deleting a notification

// cancel the notification with id value of zero
await flutterLocalNotificationsPlugin.cancel(0);

Cancelling/deleting all notifications

await flutterLocalNotificationsPlugin.cancelAll();

Getting details on if the app was launched via a notification created by this plugin

final NotificationAppLaunchDetails? notificationAppLaunchDetails =
    await flutterLocalNotificationsPlugin.getNotificationAppLaunchDetails();

iOS only Periodic notifications showing up after reinstallation

If you have set notifications to be shown periodically on older iOS versions (< 10) and the application was uninstalled without cancelling all alarms, then the next time it's installed you may see the "old" notifications being fired. If this is not the desired behaviour then you can add code similar to the following to the didFinishLaunchingWithOptions method of your AppDelegate class.

Objective-C:

if(![[NSUserDefaults standardUserDefaults]objectForKey:@"Notification"]){
    [[UIApplication sharedApplication] cancelAllLocalNotifications];
    [[NSUserDefaults standardUserDefaults]setBool:YES forKey:@"Notification"];
}

Swift:

if(!UserDefaults.standard.bool(forKey: "Notification")) {
    UIApplication.shared.cancelAllLocalNotifications()
    UserDefaults.standard.set(true, forKey: "Notification")
}

📈 Testing

As the plugin class is not static, it is possible to mock and verify its behaviour when writing tests as part of your application. Check the source code for a sample test suite that has been kindly implemented (test/flutter_local_notifications_test.dart) that demonstrates how this can be done.

If you decide to use the plugin class directly as part of your tests, the methods will be mostly no-op and methods that return data will return default values.

Part of this is because the plugin detects if you're running on a supported plugin to determine which platform implementation of the plugin should be used. If the platform isn't supported, it will default to the aforementioned behaviour to reduce friction when writing tests. If this not desired then consider using mocks.

If a platform-specific implementation of the plugin is required for your tests, use the debugDefaultTargetPlatformOverride property provided by the Flutter framework.

Libraries

flutter_local_notifications