Apple News notification guidelines
Content guidelines
Focus on promoting content that only you can provide. Your notifications should play to your strengths, delivering on the expectations users have for your brand.
Avoid clickbait. Users should get some information from the notification without necessarily having to tap through to the article.
Keep notification copy between 10 and 95 characters. Notifications must contain at least 10 characters. If your notification is longer than 95 characters, the text will be truncated on some devices.
Label opinion or commentary notifications. If the columnist is well known, it can also be useful to add their name to the notification.
Alert to articles that have thumbnail images and excerpts. The thumbnail and excerpt will appear in the detail view of a notification. The thumbnail is also needed for an article to be included in the notification summary that’s part of iOS 15, iPadOS 15, or later.
Link your notification to the best story possible. All notifications must link to content available in Apple News. In breaking news situations, there may not be a full article available right away. In that case, it’s advisable to publish a quick article in Apple News that you can update as the story develops.
Double-check photos, videos, and embeds. If your notification references any of these things, make sure they’ve been uploaded correctly into your Apple News article.
Copyedit and fact-check. After a notification is sent, you can’t edit the copy. Errors damage your credibility with users.
Target time zones when applicable. You can send notifications to users in specific time zones. For example, if a storm hits the East Coast, you can send a notification only to users in the Eastern time zone. Or, if you send a notification to your morning briefing at 6 a.m. ET but don’t want to wake up West Coast users at 3 a.m. PT, you can send a separate notification to West Coast users 3 hours later.
Pay attention to the size of your notification list and notification CTR. Contact your Apple News representative if you want to discuss your notification performance and strategy.
Send correction notifications if necessary. If you send a notification with an error, follow up with a clearly labeled correction notification that links to a story with the correct information. (Contact your Apple News representative if you’ve reached the frequency cap and need to issue a correction.)
Content restrictions
Don’t send notifications with questionable sourcing or incomplete information. It’s better to be right than to be first. During a breaking or developing news story, wait until there’s substantial information about what’s happening to send a notification.
Don’t send notifications with unnecessarily or gratuitously vulgar language. Apple News is included on every on every iPhone, iPad, and Mac. Keep in mind that the potential audience is very diverse in age and sensibility.
Don’t send marketing notifications. Notifications must not be sold as part of a sponsorship or ad buy. Notifications shouldn’t link to sponsored content, native advertising, or other noneditorial articles.
Don’t send more than two commerce notifications per week. The focus should be on quality products that your team recommends based on product expertise, research, or testing. Avoid notifications about deals that will expire quickly, as they can lead to a frustrating user experience.
Notification frequency
If you send a mix of breaking and nonbreaking news alerts: Send up to three notifications a day. We recognize that news is unpredictable and you may need to send more on a particularly busy day. However, there will be a hard cap at five notifications.
If you send only nonbreaking news alerts: Send up to two notifications per day.
Note: The frequency guidelines pertain to the number of articles you send notifications for, not the total number of notifications you send.
Notifications for the same article sent to users in different territories and time zones count as a single notification, unless you are about to reach the cap. Your last notification must be sent to your entire intended audience at once; it cannot be sent separately to users in different territories and time zones.
If you send more than one notification for the same article to users in the same territory and time zone at different points of the day, such as for a developing story, that counts as multiple notifications.
Penalties for violations
If a publisher repeatedly violates any of these guidelines, the publisher’s ability to send notifications may be temporarily or permanently revoked.