Real-time, without the leak

When someone in your family sends you a message, you want to know immediately. Shoal notifies you on iPhone, Android and the web — whether the app is open, in the background or closed.

Most apps hand the push service a readable preview. Shoal doesn’t. The services that carry notifications to your phone — Apple Push Notification service, Google’s Firebase Cloud Messaging, or your browser’s push service — receive an encrypted payload. They see metadata (which device, how big, when) and nothing else.

Can Apple or Google read our notifications?

Not what’s in them. Their push services carry the notification, but only as an encrypted payload, and your device decrypts the preview itself:

  1. When you allow notifications, the Shoal app registers your device with Apple’s or Google’s push service (or your browser’s).
  2. When a message arrives for you, Shoal queues an encrypted notification payload.
  3. The push service delivers that payload to your device.
  4. Your device decrypts the preview with your family’s key, which it already holds, and shows who’s messaging and what they said.

If your device can’t decrypt the preview — say, just after a fresh install — it shows a plain “New message” instead of anything revealing.

Built for families

  • Shared devices stay discreet. On a family device where no child has picked themselves yet, notifications show a content-free “New message” rather than someone else’s conversation.
  • Active hours apply. A child’s device doesn’t buzz outside the hours a family admin has set.
  • Word rules apply. Blocked words are hidden in the preview, just as they are in the chat.

As with everything in Shoal, notification previews are encrypted, not end-to-end: the security page explains the difference.