Overview

Using Chat SDK for Flutter, you can send notification messages to your user's device when the device is either idle or running the client app in the background. For group channels only, notifications can be configured to display an alert, play a sound, or place a badge on the client app's icon.

Push notifications for Flutter client apps are sent using Firebase Cloud Messaging (FCM) or Apple Push Notification service (APNs), depending on users' device. When a message is sent to the Sendbird server through our Chat SDK, the server communicates with FCM or APNs with a push notification payload, which contains custom data that your app needs in order to respond to the notifications. Then, the FCM or APNs delivers a push notification to mobile devices where the client app is installed.

By default, when a user receives messages while disconnected from the Sendbird server, the server sends push notification requests to FCM for the messages, regardless of platform the user is on. This is possible because the Chat SDK automatically detects when a user's client app goes into the background from the foreground and updates the user's connection status to disconnected. Therefore, under normal circumstances, there is no need to explicitly call the disconnect() method.

Users can set their preferences for receiving notifications in their devices. The following is a list of functionalities that our Chat SDK provides.