iOS background behaviour · Porthole docs

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iOS background behaviour

iOS suspends an app’s network connections shortly after it leaves the foreground. Porthole keeps the WebSocket open while the app is visible and for the short grace period iOS allows afterwards; after that no notifications can arrive from the daemon directly.

What that means in practice:

With the app open, permission prompts and “needs input” states appear live.
With the phone locked or the app in the background, nothing arrives until you open the app again. Porthole reconnects automatically and shows the current state immediately.
Android can keep the connection alive with a foreground service (a persistent notification), so Android users get timely alerts without any cloud service.

The only way to wake an iOS app from the outside is Apple’s push service, which requires a server holding the app’s push key. That is what the optional Supporter subscription pays for: the daemon sends an encrypted wake-up through a small relay, the phone wakes, brings the VPN up on demand, and fetches the details from your machine. Nothing about your sessions leaves the VPN; the relay sees a device token and ciphertext.