Windows Push Notification Service (commonly referred to as Windows Notification Service or WNS) is a

notification service A notification service provides means to send a notice to many persons at once. For example, if a flood were likely, residents of a community could be warned it's time to evacuate. If a school were suddenly closed for the day, students or paren ...

developed by

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...

for all devices running

Microsoft Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

platforms. It allows for developers to send push data ("toast" and "tile" updates) to Windows and

Universal Windows Platform Universal Windows Platform (UWP) is a computing platform created by Microsoft and introduced in Windows 10. The purpose of this platform is to help develop universal apps that run on Windows 10, Windows 10 Mobile (discontinued), Windows 11, Xbox ...

applications which implement the feature. Designed as a successor to the Microsoft Push Notification Service, it was first supported on

Windows 8 Windows 8 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was Software release life cycle#Release to manufacturing (RTM), released to manufacturing on August 1, 2012, made available for download via Microsoft ...

and subsequently on Windows Phone 8.1 upon its release.

Technical details

Design and compatibility

The Windows Push Notification Service (WNS) was designed as a successor to the Microsoft Push Notification Service (MPNS), which was only supported natively on the

Windows Phone 8 Windows Phone 8 is the second generation of the Windows Phone mobile operating system from Microsoft Corporation, Microsoft, released on October 29, 2012. It runs on the Windows NT kernel and is the successor to Windows Phone 7. It was the first ...

Operating System. Developers can still use the MPNS on apps that are installed on newer versions of

Windows Mobile Windows Mobile is a discontinued mobile operating system developed by Microsoft for smartphones and personal digital assistants (PDA). Designed to be the portable equivalent of the Windows desktop OS in the emerging Mobile device, mobile/port ...

(

or Windows Phone 8.1), but only if the Windows application was already registered to use the MPNS and has been converted to a

Microsoft Silverlight Microsoft Silverlight is a discontinued application framework designed for writing and running rich internet applications, similar to Adobe Inc., Adobe's Run time environment, runtime, Adobe Flash. While early versions of Silverlight focused on ...

application and modified to re-target the new platform. In 2015, Microsoft announced that the WNS would be expanded to utilize the

architecture, allowing for push data to be sent to

Windows 10 Windows 10 is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. The successor to Windows 8.1, it was Software release cycle#Release to manufacturing (RTM), released to manufacturing on July 15, 2015, and later to retail on July 2 ...

Windows 10 Mobile Windows 10 Mobile is the fourth and final generation of Microsoft's Windows Phone mobile operating system, succeeding Windows Phone 8.1. First released in 2015, it was marketed by Microsoft as being an Windows 10 editions, edition of its Per ...

Xbox Xbox is a video gaming brand that consists of four main home video game console lines, as well as application software, applications (games), the streaming media, streaming service Xbox Cloud Gaming, and online services such as the Xbox networ ...

, as well as other supported platforms using universal API calls and POST requests. During the 2015 Build keynote,

announced a

bridge that would allow Android and

iOS Ios, Io or Nio (, ; ; locally Nios, Νιός) is a Greek island in the Cyclades group in the Aegean Sea. Ios is a hilly island with cliffs down to the sea on most sides. It is situated halfway between Naxos and Santorini. It is about long an ...

software to be ported to

and published to the

Windows Store The Microsoft Store (formerly known as the Windows Store) is a digital distribution platform operated by Microsoft. It was created as an app store for Windows 8 as the primary means of distributing Universal Windows Platform apps. With ...

. In August 2015, A version of the Microsoft Android bridge toolset was reported to be leaked and available on the internet along with its documentation. The leaked toolset required developers to register and use the WNS to send notification data to ported applications, and would not allow for

Google Cloud Messaging Google Cloud Messaging (GCM) was a mobile notification service developed by Google that enables third-party application developers to send notification data or information from developer-run servers to applications that target the Google Android ...

to be used instead. Microsoft later discontinued the Android bridge project in favor of continuing support for iOS application porting instead. During the 2016 Build keynote, Microsoft announced an update to the WNS and the

Operating System that will allow for Android and iOS devices to forward push notifications received to

to be viewed and discarded.

Architecture

The architecture of the Windows Push Notification Service is similar to that of its predecessor, in that it consists of servers and interfaces that generate, maintain, store, and authenticate unique identifiers (called ''Channel URI Identifiers'') for all devices that register to use the service. When a device enrolls to receive data and notification information using the WNS, it first sends a device registration request to the WNS network. The WNS network acknowledges the request, and responds with the device's unique ''Channel URI Identifier''. Typically, the device will then send its identifier to a server owned by the developer so that it can be stored and used for sending notifications. When the app developer wishes to transmit a notification or other WNS data to the device, it will transmit a POST request to the WNS network. The network will acknowledge and authenticate the request. If the authentication succeeds, the data to be transmitted is enqueued and then sent to the device from the WNS network using the ''Channel URI Identifier''.

References

External links

* {{Good article Windows technology .NET Push technology Windows APIs