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Receive notifications

Learn how to respond to a notification received by your app and take action based on the event.


The expo-notifications library contains event listeners that handle how your app responds when receiving a notification.

Notification event listeners

The addNotificationReceivedListener and addNotificationResponseReceivedListener event listeners receive an object when a notification is received or interacted with.

These listeners allow you to add behavior when notifications are received while your app is open and foregrounded and when your app is backgrounded or closed and the user taps on the notification.

useEffect(() => {
  registerForPushNotificationsAsync().then(token => setExpoPushToken(token));

  notificationListener.current = Notifications.addNotificationReceivedListener(notification => {
    setNotification(notification);
  });

  responseListener.current = Notifications.addNotificationResponseReceivedListener(response => {
    console.log(response);
  });

  return () => {
    Notifications.removeNotificationSubscription(notificationListener.current);
    Notifications.removeNotificationSubscription(responseListener.current);
  };
}, []);

For more information on these objects, see Notification documentation.

Foreground notification behavior

To handle the behavior when notifications are received when your app is foregrounded, use Notifications.setNotificationHandler with the handleNotification() callback to set the following options:

  • shouldShowAlert
  • shouldPlaySound
  • shouldSetBadge
Notifications.setNotificationHandler({
  handleNotification: async () => ({
    shouldShowAlert: true,
    shouldPlaySound: false,
    shouldSetBadge: false,
  }),
});

Closed notification behavior

On Android, users can set certain OS-level settings, usually revolving around performance and battery optimization, that can prevent notifications from being delivered when the app is closed. For example, one such setting is the Deep Clear option on OnePlus devices using Android 9 and lower versions.