IOS – How to turn off push notifications for individual apps in iOS 5

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When an app is first installed, occasionally it asks if you would like to receive push notifications for that app. Normally I click 'No' and never think about it again. But yesterday, I accidentally clicked 'Yes', and would now like to turn push off for that app so as to save battery life.

If I go to notifications in the settings app, I can easily change the type of notification to 'None', however is this actually disabling push, or just hiding the notification?

Some of the apps that I am pretty sure I clicked 'No' to push notifications have this setting set to 'Banner' – making me think that these settings aren't related to whether push is turned on or off for that app.

What is the correct way to enable/disable push after initially selecting an option on app installation? Are the notifications settings related to push?

Best Answer

There is no way to disable push notifications. They are handled by Apple's servers and will be sent to your device even if you uninstall the program.

Disabling all the app's respective settings under the Notification Center will only hide them. Refer to Apple's developer Push documentation for more details.

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Specifically, look at the Apple Push Notification (APN) Service, which "transports and routes a notification from a given provider to a given device." Apple says the following about the APN:

Sometimes APNs might attempt to deliver notifications for an application on a device, but the device may repeatedly refuse delivery because there is no target application. This often happens when the user has uninstalled the application. In these cases, APNs informs the provider through a feedback service that the provider connects with. The feedback service maintains a list of devices per application for which there were recent, repeated failed attempts to deliver notifications. The provider should obtain this list of devices and stop sending notifications to them.

—Source

In short, Push notifications are handled outside of the device. To stop them, once a program has been installed, means the developer of the program must remove your device from the list (or the notification must fail enough for the APN to stop sending them entirely). As a user, there is not way to "stop" them, just hide them from within iOS.

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