What happens when I receive a Beep?

It’s very similar to what you’re already used to with text messages.

When an organisation sends you a notification, you’ll get a Beep.

You’ll see a little notification pop up in your phone’s notification area. If your volume is up, you’ll also hear a “beep beep” sound. You can tap on the notification to open the message in the Beep app.

Any Beeps you receive will also appear in your inbox in the Beep app.

How do Beeps work?

Beep uses APNS (Apple Push Notification Service), which is a service provided by Apple that allows us to send push notifications to iOS devices. That’s a bit of a mouthful, so we call them “beeps”.

On Android devices we use their equivalent, Google’s Firebase Cloud Messaging or FCM.

Push noti-what?

Push notifications are just like text messages, but instead of using your mobile phone network’s SMS text messaging service, they use a data connection and come through Apple’s Push Notification Service, or Google’s Cloud Messaging service.

You’re probably already receiving push notifications from other apps on your smartphone - any of those “in-app” notifications are likely to use Apple’s or Google’s push notification service.

How much data is this going to eat?

A tiny amount.

Each notification uses around one to four kilobytes of data. You can fit hundreds of them into a single megabyte. So even if you’re really, really popular, you don’t need to worry.

I’ve registered, but I’m not receiving notifications?

Make sure you have notifications enabled, and that you have a mobile data connection.

Enabling notifications

Notifications are usually enabled by default, but you may need to manually enable them.

The exact steps are slightly different depending on your exact version of iOS - contact our helpdesk if you’re stuck.

  • For iOS 10:
  • For iOS 9:
    • Open Settings → Notifications → Beep and ensure Allow Notifications is on, and the Alert Style When Unlocked option is set to Banners or Alerts.

If you’re still receiving text messages from organisations using Beep

It’s likely that the organisation doesn’t have your correct mobile number. Get in touch with them and make sure they are up to date.