Kukuroo: Self-Hosted Web Push for iOS in a Single Cloudflare Worker
Self-hosted web push Cloudflare Worker, works on iOS
Kukuroo is a self-hosted push notification service that runs entirely on Cloudflare Workers, enabling iOS devices to receive web push notifications without a dedicated server or native app. It leverages the Web Push API on iOS 18.4+ and requires Safari with the page added to the home screen. Setup is a one-command process via npx, and it can be mounted into an existing Worker. Notifications are encrypted to the device, and the service supports up to 50 devices per send on the free plan.
No server to keep alive. A Worker and a KV namespace. Nothing to host, renew, or restart at 3am.
- saiday
Sending push notifications to iOS without relying on a native app has already become a mature option. Last year Apple extended the standard Web Push with Declarative Web Push, which finally makes the whole thing make sense. (It's handled natively by WebKit rather than driven by JavaScript, which improves push reliability and privacy, much like the native push notification model.)
Kukuroo uses Cloudflare Workers so that end devices can subscribe to push notifications and relay push requests to the Worker, which signs and delivers them. I personally found it genuinely useful and full of potential, so I open sourced it:
kukuroo.cc
Requirements:
Safari on iOS and macOS only (though seriously, who receives push notifications on macOS?)
The web page that receives the notifications has to be added to the Home Screen
A Cloudflare account. Push notifications and lightweight serverless functions are a perfect match
- mrklol
My biggest problem with web push is that you won’t get notifications on iOS anymore, if you haven’t opened the app for a while. A tad bad for some apps.
- skybrian
It sounds like adding a Safari web app to your home screen is a slightly janky delivery mechanism?
Could you use Safari for delivering the notifications even if your default browser is something else?