No.
Apple does not provide any system process that refreshes your app’s APNs token automatically after a restore or migration. The token is only refreshed once your app explicitly registers again.
From Apple’s documentation:
“APNs issues a new device token to your app when certain events happen. The app must register with APNs each time it launches.”
— Apple Developer Documentation: Registering Your App with APNs
And:
“When the device token has changed, the user must launch your app once before APNs can once again deliver remote notifications to the device.”
— Configuring Remote Notification Support (Archived Apple Doc)
That means the OS will not wake your app automatically to renew the token post-restore. The user must open the app at least once.
2. Can the app be awakened silently (e.g., background app refresh or silent push) to refresh its token before the user opens it?
Not reliably.
While background modes like silent push (content-available: 1) or background app refresh can wake your app occasionally, they don’t work until the app has been launched at least once after installation or restore.
Also, if the APNs token changed due to restore, your backend will still be sending notifications to the old, invalid token — meaning the silent push will never arrive in the first place.
“The system does not guarantee delivery of background notifications in all cases. Notifications are throttled based on current conditions, such as the device’s battery level or thermal state.”
— Apple Docs: Pushing Background Updates to Your App
So while background updates might sometimes trigger, you can’t rely on them for refreshing tokens after a restore.
3. What’s the best practice to ensure push delivery reliability after a device restore?
Here’s what works in production:
Always call registerForRemoteNotifications() on every cold launch.
Send the token to your backend inside
application(_:didRegisterForRemoteNotificationsWithDeviceToken:).
Compare the new token to the last saved one and update your backend if it changed.
Do not cache or assume the token is permanent.
“Never cache device tokens in your app; instead, get them from the system when you need them.”
— Apple Docs: Registering Your App with APNs
Treat device tokens as ephemeral — they can change anytime (reinstall, restore, OS update, etc.).
Handle APNs error responses such as:
410 Unregistered → token is invalid; stop sending.
400 BadDeviceToken → token doesn’t match app environment.
When receiving these, mark tokens as invalid and remove them from your database.
Keep a “last registration date” per device and flag stale ones.
For critical alerts (e.g., security, transactions), have fallback channels (email, SMS, etc.).
“If a provider attempts to deliver a push notification to an application, but the application no longer exists on the device, APNs returns an error code indicating that the device token is no longer valid.”
— Apple Docs: Communicating with APNs