Yeah, I was doing some more reading and I think it might only be the newest version of the UnifiedPush spec which requires the message to be encrypted.

• https://codeberg.org/UnifiedPush/specifications/pulls/1
• https://github.com/binwiederhier/ntfy-android/pull/98
• https://codeberg.org/iNPUTmice/Conversations/issues/428

I noticed that the examples given on https://codeberg.org/iNPUTmice/up/src/branch/master/README.md are unencrypted.

I mean ntfy’s primary purpose is not dependent on UnifiedPush – all UP functionality could be removed and ntfy would still work as intended.

Ntfy server knows how to be a UP gateway, and relays those messages to the ntfy app, which knows how to be a UP distributor.

As far as I understand it, a client app using UP to recieve push notifications does perform a registration step with the UP gateway (via the distributor app which communicates with the gateway via its own transport), which sets up and responds with the api endpoint details, which the client app relays to its servers, which can then send UP notifications via the specified gateway.

You could have a look at the messages ntfy is passing around using its trace function: https://docs.ntfy.sh/troubleshooting/

It doesn’t matter. Even if the ntfy message was plaintext, that plaintext content would be a UnifiedPush “Push message” which is the RFC8291-encrypted raw POST data.

Not really. “Use” isn’t a well defined word in this context.

The ntfy server/client and the protocol it uses is merely the conduit for the UnifiedPush protocol. Sort of like how tls or ssl are a conduit for http.

In its typical primary use, ntfy is unrelated to UnifiedPush.

I think a lot of comments have missed that ntfy.sh does not use UnifiedPush, the ntfy server is a UnifiedPush provider and the ntfy app is a UnifiedPush distributor.

Regarding encryption of the push message, from https://unifiedpush.org/developers/spec/android/ :

Push message: This is an array of bytes (ByteArray) sent by the application server to the push server. The distributor sends this message to the end user application. It MUST be the raw POST data received by the push server (or the rewrite proxy if present). The message MUST be an encrypted content that follows RFC8291. Its size is between 1 and 4096 bytes (inclusive).