Push notification / rich push
A message your server sends to a phone that shows up on the lock screen even when the app is closed. Rich push adds images and buttons.
See it
What it is
A push notification starts on your server, not in the app. You send a payload to Apple's APNs or Google's FCM addressed to a device's push token, and the OS displays it on the lock screen even if your app is closed or the phone has not run it in weeks. Rich push is the same pipe carrying more: an image or video, action buttons, a custom expanded layout. On iOS that means a Notification Service Extension plus mutable-content in the payload, on Android a BigPictureStyle notification with actions.
Reach for it when there is genuine news for one person: their order shipped, someone replied, the thing they were waiting for is ready. Silent or background pushes are the quiet variant, waking the app to sync without showing anything. Deep link the tap target so it opens the exact screen the notification is about, not your home tab.
Gotcha: treat the opt-in prompt as one clean shot, because it usually is. iOS has always asked, and once someone taps 'Don't Allow' the system dialog does not come back for that install. Android 13 added a POST_NOTIFICATIONS prompt, but its rules are messier: whether you can show the system dialog again depends on the OS version, your target SDK, and how many times the user has already declined. So do not hardcode 'denied means Settings forever'. Read the current permission status, check whether a rationale is still warranted before re-asking, and only send people to Settings when no system prompt is available to you. Prime the ask first, at a moment where the value is obvious. And prune tokens: they rotate on reinstall and restore, so a table of stale tokens quietly rots your delivery rate.
Ask AI for it
Add push notifications to this app. Register for remote notifications on both platforms, capture the push token, and sync it to the backend with the user id, platform, app version, and locale, refreshing it whenever it rotates. Implement rich push: an iOS Notification Service Extension that downloads and attaches an image from the payload's image URL, an Android BigPictureStyle equivalent, and two action buttons defined by a category in the payload. Every notification carries a deep link that routes to the specific screen on tap, including from a cold start. Handle foreground presentation, badge counts, and silent background pushes separately, and mark tokens invalid when the provider reports them unregistered.