Automatically Send Push Notifications to Inactive Users

Posted on 5. September 2025 by Jan Bunk

A push notification waking up a sleeping humanoid robot, digital art

Wouldn’t it be nice if you could gently remind your app users to come back after they’ve been away for a while? That’s exactly what the inactive user notification feature does. Instead of letting users slip away unnoticed, you can now automatically send them a push notification after they haven’t opened your app for a set number of days. It's a great way to increase engagement and ensure your users remember your app.

How it works

You can configure inactive user notifications in your push notification settings. For each notification you can choose a title, message and the number of days of inactivity after which the notification will be sent.

A screenshot of the push notification settings with two inactive user notifications configured.

Once a user opens the app, it resets the timer for the inactivity notifications. For example if you have 2 inactivity notifications - notification A after 5 days and notification B after 10 days, it would work like this:

  1. The user opens the app on day 0.
  2. On day 5, notification A gets sent because the user hasn't opened the app again since day 0.
  3. On day 7, the user opens the app.
  4. On day 12, notification A gets sent (again).
  5. On day 17, notification B gets sent because the user still hasn't opened the app.

Best practices

Stick to one, two or at most three inactivity reminders. Sending too many will reduce the effectiveness.

When to send the first reminder depends on how much new content is published in your app. A social media or news app with daily fresh content could send the first inactivity notification after seven days, while an online shop where users typically order something once a month or even less often is probably better served with a notification after 30 days.

Configure an increasing delay between each reminder. If your first notification gets sent after 30 days, the second one would be appropriate after 75-90 days.

You need to find a balance between sending enough inactivity notifications and not annoying your users. If you annoy your users, they might disable the inactivity notifications or even uninstall the app.

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Author Jan Bunk
Written by
Jan Bunk

Hi, I'm Jan! I created webtoapp.design in 2019 while studying computer science in university. A lot has changed since then - not only have I graduated, but it's also no longer just me running webtoapp.design. We've grown to a global, fully remote team and have gathered lots of experience around app development and app publishing. We've created and published hundreds of apps in the app stores, where they've been downloaded millions of times.