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React Native Academy · Lesson

Notification Channels and Rich Content

Create notification channels on Android for different notification types, add images and action buttons to notifications, and configure badge count on iOS.

What Are Notification Channels?

Notification channels are categories of notifications that Android users can control independently. Introduced in Android 8 (API 26), channels let users decide which types of notifications from your app they want to receive — for example, they might allow 'Messages' but block 'Promotions'. Each channel has its own sound, vibration, and importance settings.

Channels are an Android-only concept. iOS has its own notification management through notification categories and user settings, but no direct equivalent to channels. Always guard channel setup code with a Platform.OS check.

import * as Notifications from 'expo-notifications';
import { Platform } from 'react-native';

async function setupChannels() {
  if (Platform.OS !== 'android') return;

  // Create your app's notification channels:
  await Notifications.setNotificationChannelAsync('messages', { ... });
  await Notifications.setNotificationChannelAsync('reminders', { ... });
  await Notifications.setNotificationChannelAsync('promotions', { ... });
}

Creating a Notification Channel

Create a channel with Notifications.setNotificationChannelAsync(channelId, config). The config includes the name (shown to users in Settings), importance (how prominently notifications appear), vibrationPattern, lightColor, and whether to enableVibrate.

Channels are permanent — once created, users can modify them in Settings and your app cannot override their preferences. Create channels before calling them, and call this setup on every app launch because channels persist across app reinstalls through the channel ID.

await Notifications.setNotificationChannelAsync('messages', {
  name: 'Messages',
  description: 'New messages from other users',
  importance: Notifications.AndroidImportance.HIGH,
  vibrationPattern: [0, 250, 250, 250],
  lightColor: '#0066CC',
  enableVibrate: true,
  enableLights: true,
  showBadge: true,
  lockscreenVisibility: Notifications.AndroidNotificationVisibility.PUBLIC,
});

All lessons in this course

  1. Requesting Permission and Getting a Push Token
  2. Sending Notifications via the Expo Push API
  3. Handling Foreground and Background Notifications
  4. Notification Channels and Rich Content
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