Actual Android push message character limit?

Question

I thought it was a 4KB payload limit from the official documentation and I sent messages with over 1000 characters but they were truncated to 300-400 because the notification drawer would only display 11 lines. What's the actual, official limit? What's the highest number of characters I know I'm going to get displayed?

Answer 1

Firebase Cloud Messaging allows you to send message payloads up to 4K. But that doesn't mean the receiving device can display a message of that size.

For iOS I found this question on maximum display for various notification display types: What is the maximum length of a Push Notification alert text?

Urban airship also has a great table that shows the maximum number of characters for both iPhones and some common Android phones.

From those sources it seems that:

• The maximum number of characters displayed depends on iOS version, notification display style, and device type/size.

• Your experience of 300-400 characters is in the common range for the notification drawer on Android and much higher than for the notification center on iPhones.