How do you manage local and remote push notifications and their tokens?

Short answer

Use expo-notifications or Notifee to request user permission, obtain the device's Push Token and send it to the server, and listen for notification taps to navigate directly to a screen.

Explanation

Notifications require APNs certificates for iOS and Firebase Cloud Messaging (FCM) for Android. On app startup, request notification permission, obtain the unique Expo Push Token, and store it in the server database with the user's account. Handle opening the app from a notification with addNotificationResponseReceivedListener.

Code example

import * as Notifications from 'expo-notifications';

async function registerForPushNotifications(): Promise<string | null> {
  const { status } = await Notifications.requestPermissionsAsync();
  if (status !== 'granted') return null;

  const tokenData = await Notifications.getExpoPushTokenAsync();
  return tokenData.data; // Send this token to the Backend
}

Common mistakes

• Ignoring required notification channel setup on Android, which can prevent notifications from appearing or playing alert sounds.

Follow-up questions

• How do you manage background geolocation without the app being killed?

Sources

• Expo docs — Notifications
• Expo docs — Push notifications overview