Definition

requireInteraction (Notification option)

Short definition

requireInteraction is a boolean option, e.g. showNotification("Incoming call", { requireInteraction: true }), that prevents the browser from automatically dismissing the notification after its default timeout (a few seconds on most desktop platforms). The notification instead stays visible until the user clicks it, clicks an action, or closes it manually.

Reviewed August 6, 2026

This is intended for time-sensitive or high-importance alerts — an incoming call, a critical system status — where auto-dismissal risks the user never seeing the message at all.

requireInteraction is primarily a desktop-platform concept; many mobile OS notification shades already persist notifications until swiped away regardless of this flag, so its practical effect is most visible on Windows and macOS Chrome.

Overusing requireInteraction for routine notifications trains users to treat every alert from your app as urgent, undermining its usefulness for the cases that actually need it — Google's own notification UX guidance recommends reserving it for genuinely actionable, time-critical events.

The option is part of the standard Notification API options object documented at https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Notification/requireInteraction.

Related terms

silent (Notification option)

silent is a boolean Notification option, e.g. showNotification("Synced", { silent: true }), that suppresses the sound, vibration and screen-wake behaviour a notification would normally trigger, while still adding it to the notification shade for the user to see whenever they next check.

actions (Notification option)

actions is an array option passed to showNotification(), e.g. { actions: [{ action: "reply", title: "Reply" }, { action: "dismiss", title: "Dismiss" }] }, that renders extra buttons on the notification itself. The service worker's notificationclick handler reads event.action to see which button, if any, the user pressed.

Notification permission states

Notification.permission returns one of three strings: "default" (the user has not yet decided, so the site may still call Notification.requestPermission() to ask), "granted" (the site may show notifications), or "denied" (the site is blocked from showing notifications and, critically, cannot re-prompt programmatically once denied).

Declarative Web Push

Declarative Web Push is a format where the push message payload itself is a JSON object describing the notification (title, body, icon, and so on) that the browser displays directly, rather than requiring a service worker's push event handler to run arbitrary JavaScript to call showNotification(). WebKit introduced it partly to allow more efficient and more private push delivery on iOS/Safari.

appinstalled event

appinstalled is a window event, listened for with window.addEventListener("appinstalled", () => { ... }), that fires after the browser has finished installing the PWA — regardless of whether the install was triggered via the native beforeinstallprompt flow or a browser menu item. It fires exactly once per successful install and carries no event detail beyond the fact that installation completed.

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