# Push notification preview

Updated 2026-10-22. Free tool, no account: https://notifly.io/tools/push-preview

Type a title and a message to see how the notification reads on an iPhone Lock Screen and on an Android phone, collapsed and expanded, before you send it. The counts underneath show the characters you used and the bytes the text adds to an APNs or FCM payload.

Android cuts the text of a collapsed notification to one line unless the app uses an expandable style; iOS shows more of the message but still clamps a long one until it is expanded. Where exactly a line breaks depends on the device width, the font size the person chose and the language, so put the words that matter first.

## How to use it

1. **Write the notification.** Enter the app name, the title and the message. An image URL is optional.
2. **Read both platforms.** Compare the iPhone Lock Screen frame with the Android collapsed and expanded frames, and look for a cut-off marker.
3. **Check the size.** Keep the title and message well inside the payload budget: the text is only part of what APNs and FCM count.

## Limits this tool checks

| Limit | Value | Source | Checked |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| APNs payload (every push type except VoIP) | 4096 bytes | [Apple Developer: Generating a remote notification](https://developer.apple.com/documentation/usernotifications/generating-a-remote-notification) | 2026-10-21 |
| FCM message payload, keys and values (notification and data messages) | 4096 bytes | [Firebase: FCM message types](https://firebase.google.com/docs/cloud-messaging/customize-messages/set-message-type) | 2026-10-21 |

## Frequently asked questions

### How many characters fit in a push notification?

Neither Apple nor Google publishes a fixed character count for what a notification displays: the cut-off depends on screen width, text size and language. The hard limits are on the payload: 4096 bytes for an APNs payload and 4096 bytes for an FCM message. In practice, keep the title to a few words and put the key fact in the first line of the message.

### Why is my Android notification cut off after one line?

Android's documentation says a notification's text is truncated to fit one line by default. To show more, the app has to use an expandable style such as BigTextStyle, and the person has to expand the notification.

### Is this preview pixel-exact?

No. It approximates the default system layouts so you can catch long titles and buried messages early. Fonts, sizes and line breaks vary by device, OS version, accessibility settings and language. Send a real test to a device before a big campaign.

### Does the image show on the Lock Screen?

On Android an image appears when the notification is expanded. On iOS a remote notification needs a notification service extension (mutable-content set to 1) to download and attach an image, so the preview shows it only in the expanded frame.