Push Notification Onboarding
Author: julianlamCreated Feb 6, 2026Updated Aug 23, 2026
Currently web-push (bundled with NodeBB) relies on the user to proactively find the "Push Notifications" sub-page from within the accounts page, and opt-in to push notifications.
Conversion rate: ~0.1% (the 0.1% is probably just me)
Let's improve that by prompting the user to enable push notifications on first invocation of the installed PWA
- Listen for the
appinstalledevent and save a flag to local storage to trigger app onboarding flowlocalStorage.setItem('pwa_onboarding', 'true');
- Check for
display-mode: standalone;(this is true when the installed app is opened, not the website) and the onboarding flagconst isPWA = window.matchMedia('(display-mode: standalone)').matches;
- Redirect user to
/app-onboardor similar, and allow plugins to inject text/urls into said page - Update web-push to inject a link to the push notification settings page.
Source: NodeBB/NodeBB