App Messages
App messages are units displayed inside of your native applications. These units are great for many use cases including:
Special Offers
Announcements
Notifications Pre-Permission Prompt
When to use App Messages
Use App Messages when you want to communicate with users while they are active in your app, including:
Promotions and limited-time offers
Product announcements and feature callouts
Contextual reminders or nudges
Education and onboarding moments
Formats
App Message units are highly customizable and can be displayed in several different formats depending on the goal of the message.
Banner
The Banner unit is a smaller unit that can be displayed at the top or bottom of the device's screen and includes body text and a left- or right-aligned image.
Modal
The Modal unit displays in middle of the device and includes a large image, header, title, and body text. Up to two buttons can be added to this unit.
Full Screen
The Full Screen unit covers the device's screen and includes a large image, header, title, and body text. Up to two buttons can be added to this unit.
Building a message
The builder is four numbered steps. You can work through them in order, and a panel beside the form — Ready to Schedule — tells you at any point what is still missing.
Step 1 — Basics
Give the message a Name. This is internal: it identifies the message in your list and in reporting, and subscribers never see it.
Choose the Delivery Channels the message can be delivered to — Native Apple, Native Android, or both. A channel your domain has not integrated cannot be selected.
To start from a message you have built before, switch on Use saved template and pick one from Select a template.
Step 2 — Message
Style
Choose Modal (a centered card), Banner (a bar at the top or bottom of the screen) or Fullscreen (the whole screen). The style decides which content fields are available: a Banner has no header or title, and supports one button.
Switching style keeps your work. If you switch to Banner and back, the header and title you had written return.
Choosing colors
Background sets the message's background color, and the Header, Title and button blocks each have their own color rows. They all work the same way: click one of the swatches, type a hex value, or open the full picker with the … at the end of the row.
If you need a colour outside those groups — a brand color, for instance — use the spectrum at the top of the picker, or type its hex value into the field on the row.
Content
Each content field — Image, Header, Title, Body — is a block with its own switch. Switching a field off leaves it out of the message but keeps what you wrote, so you can switch it back on without retyping. Clicking a block's name toggles it too.
Image, Position, and Fit sit beside the thumbnail.
Use Contain when the full image must always be visible.
Use Cover when edge cropping is acceptable and you want a more immersive look.
See Choosing an image that fits for what shape of image each format wants.
Header and Title. Each has a text-color row in its header.
Keep titles short so they do not wrap awkwardly on smaller phones.
If the message is instructional, split the content between title and body for scannability.
Body. Formatting controls live in the block's header: bold, italic, strikethrough, numbered and bulleted lists, indent, alignment, text direction (LTR / RTL), text color, then Emoji and Personalize. Every control names itself on hover.
Emoji and personalization
Emoji and Personalize are available on the header, the title and the body, and behave the same way in each.
Choose Emoji to insert an emoji at the cursor. Choose Personalize to insert a macro — a placeholder replaced with each subscriber's own value when the message is delivered, so one message can greet everyone by their own city.
The same macros are offered wherever you insert one, grouped as Location and Custom. Custom macros are the ones defined for your domain.
Buttons
A Modal or Fullscreen message can carry up to two buttons; a Banner carries one.
Choose Add primary button to add the message's main action. Once it exists the control becomes Add secondary button. Remove a button with the × at the end of its row.
Button Layout — Horizontal places two buttons side by side; Vertical stacks them.
Choose Edit on a button's row to set:
Button Text — what the button says.
Action Type — Open URL, Prompt For Notification Permissions, or Dismiss. Each of the two buttons must choose a different one where they overlap.
URL — shown when the action is Open URL. Supports tracking macros.
Background and Text — the button's own colors.
Closing the message
A Modal or Fullscreen message always offers a way out. If none of its buttons dismisses the message, a close control is drawn in the top corner for you. Give one of the buttons the Dismiss action and that button takes over the job, so no separate control is drawn.
On a Fullscreen message you can also switch on Close Button to show the control regardless of what the buttons do.
A Banner never gets a close control of its own, so give it a button with the Dismiss action if people should be able to close it.
Recommendations:
Use one primary CTA when possible.
Keep CTA text concise (2 to 4 words is a good target).
If you include a second button, make it a clear alternative (for example, “Not now” or “Learn more”).
Step 3 — Who Sees It
Choose the audience:
All App Users — everyone using the app, whether or not they have accepted push notifications.
All Push Subscribers — only app users who are subscribed to push.
Specific Segments — one or more of your saved segments.
Switch on Exclude segments to remove members of chosen segments from whichever audience you selected.
An estimate of how many app users the audience reaches appears beside the form and updates as you change it.
Step 4 — When and How It Behaves
This step is three settings, each shown as a sentence. Choose the chevron on any row to open its controls in place. Rows open independently, so you can have the trigger and the schedule open together while you decide how they fit.
Trigger
The trigger decides whether anyone sees the message at all, so it is worth setting deliberately.
Immediately
Shows immediately, or the next time the app opens if it is currently closed.
On session start
Shows when a new session begins — when the user opens the app after being away for long enough, or after a cold start.
After time in app
Shows once the user has spent the configured amount of time in the app. Set the amount and its unit, then choose whether it counts This session only or across the user's Lifetime.
Custom trigger
Shows once a condition your app reports is met. Give the Key your app sends and the Value to match — for example key app_opened, value 5.
A custom trigger only fires if your app reports that key. See the App Messages SDK page for your platform for how to send one.
On screen
Priority — High, Default, Low
Decides which message appears first when more than one is eligible at the same moment. High shows first.
Auto dismiss
Off, the message stays on screen until the user dismisses it. On, set how many seconds it stays.
Allow redisplay
Off, each subscriber sees the message once. On, set how long before it may show again, in hours, days or months.
Animate entry / Animate exit
How the message arrives and leaves. Off, it appears and disappears without animation.
Entry and exit offer the same animations named for the direction they travel: Fade, Zoom In and Zoom Out in both, then Slide from Left / Right / Top / Bottom on entry and Slide to Left / Right / Top / Bottom on exit.
Schedule
Strategy — Fixed starts at one moment in the domain's time zone for everyone. Subscriber Time Zone starts at that local time for each subscriber.
Schedule Start — the date and time the message becomes eligible. The time zone it is interpreted in is shown beside it. A new message defaults to starting tomorrow.
End Date — off, the row reads Runs until paused and the message stays eligible until you pause it. Switch it on to set a date and time to stop.
Choosing an image that fits
Each format gives your image a differently shaped frame, and the image is cropped to fill it unless you choose Contain. Choose a source image shaped like the frame it will sit in:
Modal
Wide, with a capped height
1200 × 628
A taller image is cropped to about a square.
Full Screen
Tall — the image takes the space the copy does not
1080 × 1920
A wide image is cropped in from the sides.
Banner
A fixed 48 × 48 square
144 × 144
Everything is cropped to 1:1, so keep the subject centred.
JPG and PNG are both supported. The builder states the guidance for the style you have selected underneath the image controls, so you do not have to remember which is which.
In landscape, or on a tablet, the frame is a different shape again — use the App Message Previews window to check before you publish.
Knowing when a message is ready
The Ready to Schedule panel beside the form lists everything a message needs and marks each item as met or still needed, with a count. The bar at the end of the form says the same thing in one line, and Schedule stays unavailable until nothing is outstanding.
The list covers the name, at least one delivery channel, content in every field you have switched on, an audience that reaches someone, a trigger, a start date in the future, and — for each button — both its text and, where it opens a URL, its URL.
If a setting under When and How It Behaves is what is missing, that row opens itself and is marked, so you do not have to hunt for it.
Previews
Previews are integrated throughout the builder so you can validate how your message will look before publishing. Use them to confirm spacing, text length, image behavior, and button visibility across different screen sizes and UI modes.
Inline preview panel
The builder includes a preview panel that updates as you edit content and appearance. Use this to iterate quickly on layout and copy.
The panel carries its own controls: switch between Android and iOS, and between Light and Dark. A platform your message is not delivered to appears greyed out, with an explanation on hover — switch it on under Delivery Channels in Step 1 to preview it.
App Message Previews window
For deeper validation, open the App Message Previews window. This window lets you preview the same message across multiple device contexts, including:
Device type: Phone or Tablet
Platform: Apple / iOS or Android
Orientation: Portrait or Landscape
Theme: Light or Dark
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