How can we remotely dismiss a Push Notification?

Question

My app daily broadcasts a Push Notification (PN) to all users which becomes irrelevant after 4 hours. Is there any way I can remove that notification on every user's notification centre that has not tapped it within those 4 hours?

I used to think this is not possible yet, but became hopeful after seeing the Google's Hangout app behaviour - It sends PN to Mac & iOS... and if I read the message on Mac, it automatically immediately removes it from iOS' Notification Center.

I did extensive research on google, surprisingly found nothing on this - just one question here which has been duly closed!

Answer 1

The trick is to make your app support background fetching and handle the push notification when you app is in the background.

Then in the application:didReceiveRemoteNotification:fetchCompletionHandler: set the application badge to 0 so that all you push notification are removed from the notification center.

Send a special push notification where there is not data displayed to user but does contain a an command to reset the push notification state.

- (void)application:(UIApplication *)application didReceiveRemoteNotification:(NSDictionary *)userInfo fetchCompletionHandler:(void (^)(UIBackgroundFetchResult))completionHandler {

  if([[userInfo objectForKey:@"reset"] boolValue]){
    [[UIApplication sharedApplication] setApplicationIconBadgeNumber: 0];
  }

}