When you saw the term “push notifications” in the title of this article, you likely pictured something like this:

Image: Examples of a standard push notification on iOS and Android
Push notifications usually consist of an app icon, a bold title, and some text. This standard format is often quite dull and can lead to notifications being quickly scanned and dismissed. As a result, push notifications typically have low open rates, rarely exceeding 5%.
But push notifications don’t have to be so uninspiring. They can be customized to be much more engaging and visually appealing, standing out on users’ lock screens.
So after learning how to increase push notification opt-in last week, let’s learn how to take push notifications to the next level by customizing their visual appearance and making them as engaging as possible.
Customizing Push Notifications on iOS vs. Android
Both iOS and Android allow customization of push notifications beyond the default text-based format. Here’s the list breaking down all customizations you can do on each platform:
1. Adding Images to Push Notifications
You can include images (including GIFs) in your notifications to enhance their visual appeal. Notifications typically include a mandatory app icon on the left, with two additional image options:
- Large Icon: A small image that appears in the notification header on the right side. Going by my experience, using this one doesn’t really improve engagement.
- Big Picture: A larger image that appears when the notification is expanded, useful for displaying detailed images like photos, promotional banners and GIFs.

Image: iOS and Android push notifications with images
2. Adding Buttons to Push Notifications
You can add buttons to notifications to allow users to take specific actions directly without opening the app. For example, an “Add to Playlist” button can be used to drive action among users who don’t have time to watch it right away. Without the button, they would likely just dismiss the notification.
Each button must have its own action, such as opening the app, dismissing the notification, or performing a custom action.
Android supports up to 3 buttons, while iOS supports up to 4.

Image: iOS and Android push notifications with Action Buttons
3. Push Notification Sounds
Notifications can play custom sounds to grab the user’s attention. To add sounds, you include the sound files as resources within your app, as external URLs are not supported.
I would recommend using sounds only if you have a really strong reason. The majority of people use phones in silent mode, and would have a negative reaction if a sound was made for a notification that is not that important.
4. Notification Badges
Badges refer to the little numbered dots that appear on your mobile app icon, intended to capture user response. iPhones and Samsung phones will display an actual number within the badge, while other Android phones typically show only an empty badge indicator.

Image: Notification Badges on iOS and Android
5. Custom Push Notification Layouts
This is probably the most exciting option on this list. Custom layouts go beyond the standard notification styles by allowing you to completely change the structure and functionality of the push notification.
For example, instead of displaying an image in a default way programmed by the operating system, you can manually customize its behavior.
Here are some examples of custom layouts I’ve seen:
- Changing push notification text and background color
- Adapting layout to fit a larger YouTube thumbnail
- Adding a rating mechanism to a notification
- Playing a video within a notification
- Creating push stories with image carousels
- Facilitating payments directly from a push notification

GIF: Carousel stories and payment facilitation through push notifications

Image: More examples of push notification customizations
The designs and implementations showcased above are not the greatest, but it’s extremely hard to find examples of apps using push layout customizations, as their use is rare.
It is so because it requires additional coding to develop these templates, as they are not supported by default by push notification platforms. But it might be worth it, as this is a powerful feature that allows you to create a completely unique push notification appearance that will stand out above the rest.
5. Progress Indicators in Push Notifications
Android push notifications can include progress indicators to show the progress of ongoing tasks. This feature is typically used to indicate the progress of app downloads or updates, but it can also be creatively employed, such as counting down to a sale start.

Image: Countdown timer within an Android push notification
6. Push Notification Delivery Importance
You can set the priority and importance of your notifications to influence how they are presented to the user. Higher priority notifications are shown more prominently and can include sound and vibration.
The possible importance levels and the associated notification behaviors are the following:
- Urgent: makes a sound and appears as a heads-up notification.
- High: makes a sound.
- Medium: makes no sound.
- Low: makes no sound and doesn’t appear in the status bar.
7. Push notification Channels (Android) and Categories (iOS)
On Android and iOS, notifications are managed through channels or categories. Notification channels provide a unified way to organize and manage push notifications—think of them as device-level preference centers for push notifications.
This system allows you to differentiate between types of notifications by creating channels with specific behaviors, such as vibration patterns, sound, appearance, and importance levels. For example:
- A channel for marketing notifications that are medium priority, always include images and buttons, but have no sound and do not increment badge indicators.
- A channel for transactional notifications that are always urgent, make a sound, and add a notification badge.
On Android, users can also unsubscribe from specific channels, rather than all notifications at once.
The Conclusion
I hope this article has broadened your perspective on push notification capabilities and inspired you to try some of these customizations. Implementing these features can significantly increase push notification engagement. However, many brands still don’t utilize them due to a lack of awareness or the extra development effort required.
Personally, I think that customizing some elements like badges and sounds isn’t worth spending time on, but adding images and buttons is definitely a way to go. Using custom layouts can also be a huge improvement.
If you’re interested in using these features, the first step is to understand how your push notification platform handles these customizations and figure out the next steps from there. Most platforms give good documentation and ready-to-implement code snippets that make implementation relatively easy.