Hi all

I have an iPhone X with the latest version of iOS installed.

This last weekend I've noticed that WhatsApp notifications aren't coming through for some reason. There is no notification, no red app icon denoting an unread message, and only when I open WhatsApp do I see if any messages have been sent to me.

I've double checked notifications in settings, as well as notifications in WhatsApp and all is as it should be. I am running the latest version of iOS 14 (and only updated to the most recent update yesterday after all this started happening, but this has made no difference).


One other thing I've noticed is that my WhatsApp Desktop app on MacOS doesn't update either - it keeps saying the Phone has no connection (make sure your phone has an active internet connection), and only when I open Whatsapp on my phone, does the desktop app tend to update with the new messages as well.

This occurs on both wifi or cellular. It seems to me as though when WhatsApp is not open on my phone, it loses connection to the server, and only when I open it does it refresh.

Background App Refresh has always been off on my phone, and I've just turned it on for WhatsApp only to see if that makes a difference. But it shouldn't do given that it's always been off.


Does anyone have any suggestions? This is really proving to be annoying.

I have the exactly the same problem. iPhone X, iOS 14.1 and not receiving Whatsapp notifications for the last week. Other apps seem to work properly, but not Whatsapp. I have to open the app in the phone to get the new messages. The Whatsapp desktop app shows a "Phone without connection" message until I open the app on the phone. Restarted the devices several times with no result.

Sounds like this might be a problem with WhatsApp itself

I have the same problem when I had the iPhone 8+ after upgrading to ios 14 after it released.
Whatsapp notifications were delayed in pushing to my phone. I had problems connecting to the desktop/ web app once it is closed. I reset everything except re-installing the app but nothing worked.
This couldn't be resolved until I changed to a new iPhone ... and WhatApps magically worked again.
But I need to connect my phone # to WhatsApp again after moving to a new phone
I think WhatsApp was having problems registering the device after the upgrade.

Try turning off notifications globally for Whatsapp (in Settings -> Notifications -> Whatsapp). Open Whatsapp, let it complain about missing notifications.

Then turn off and on your iPhone.

After turning it on again, re-enable notifications in the settings, and open Whatsapp.

See if it works again now.

ManuCH said:

Try turning off notifications globally for Whatsapp (in Settings -> Notifications -> Whatsapp). Open Whatsapp, let it complain about missing notifications.

Then turn off and on your iPhone.

After turning it on again, re-enable notifications in the settings, and open Whatsapp.

See if it works again now.

Click to expand...

Tried .. doesn't work. I still have the same issue with my iPhone X on iOS 14.2.

coldfusioneer said:

Tried .. doesn't work. I still have the same issue with my iPhone X on iOS 14.2.

I have no idea what this could be. At this point a Whatsapp reinstall is the only thing that could help.

So, I have done the following:

- Delete and reinstall Whatsapp with restore from cloud backup to get my chats back
- Erase my phone, and restore the whole thing from iCloud backup
- Messed with notification settings
- Airplane mode
- On/off phone

As well as numerous other things. Nothing works. I've now also ordered another SIM to replace my current one, but that's obviously not going to work either.

Essentially what is happening is that as soon as the app is closed, it loses connection with the server. People who send me messages during this time get only the one tick. The messages only get sent to my phone when I subsequently reopen Whatsapp, it re-establishes connection with the server, and then I get the message and the notifications.

I've taken screen recordings and videos of my phone and Mac app proving the sequence of events and sent it to Whatsapp support. They were previously replying within 24 hours or so but now I've not heard anything from them in a couple of days.

I've got an iPhone 12 Pro coming in a week or two. I'm going to do the following:

1. Restore from iCloud. If this works, then great. However it didn't work on my iPhone X when I did this yesterday so I'm not optimistic.
2. If it doesn't work, then I'm going to set up phone as new. Download Whatsapp and register my number. Then recover my chats from the Whatsapp backup in iCloud (selectively, rather than recovering my whole iOS from cloud). Hopefully this will work (fingers crossed). If it does, then I'm going to download the rest of my apps manually (will be a good excuse to cull some of those apps I haven't used in years) and then use a third party program to recover the iCloud backups for those apps selectively (which you can't do with iCloud backup itself).

I hope that works otherwise I'm going to be stuck with just setting up a new Whatsapp account and lose all my chat history which would be a big loss for me.

So I've got a 12 Pro now. I set it up as a new phone, installed WhatsApp and recovered chat history from iCloud. All working fine now. Have now had to individually install all my previous apps and set all that up again, which has been a massive hassle, but the issue is fixed. Wonder if it was a bug affecting only older phones (I had an iPhone X).

Thank you for reporting this whole history. It's the weirdest thing I've ever heard and probably a rare occurrence, as nobody else seem to know much about it.

So there seem to be quite a few people affected by this, people are posting about this on Reddit etc and I know someone in real life. All seem to have older phones eg the X. I haven’t seen a solution yet though.

So I finally got mines to work after much trial and error. I believe anyone who had Background App Refresh disabled and did the ios 14 upgrade may have hit an iOS bug.
I did the following.
1. With background app disabled fully close the WhatsApp app
2. Go to settings and enable Background App Refresh
3. Start WhatsApp and lock your phone. Have someone call you on WhatsApp or message you
4. Once your receive the notification, close the WhatsApp app completely
5. Go back to settings and disable background refresh
6. Start WhatsApp again.

after doing the about I am getting notifications again. What still does not work is the icon badge of waiting messeges.
Hope this helps!

I wasn't personally experiencing this error, but a friend was. I directed her to the steps above and she's reporting back that her notifications are working again.

soulsteelgray said:

I wasn't personally experiencing this error, but a friend was. I directed her to the steps above and she's reporting back that her notifications are working again.

Glad it worked out. It has been a frustrating few weeks for sure 🙂

Interesting that another person I know solved this by updating to one of the 14.2.x updates, and another on Reddit did something with notification settings which fixed the problem so there seem to be multiple ‘fixes’ for this strange and frustrating problem. I couldn’t fix the problem (though I didn’t try the above) and was due to be getting a 12 Pro anyway but it was an annoying 3 weeks.

I've been dealing with this problem for days, too. It started overnight, out of nowhere. Woke up, no notifications at all. All other apps have been working really well, including Instagram etc.

I've contacted the WhatsApp support and apart from some really unhelpful stuff ("deactivate airplane mode", lol), there was one Support-Member that said that this has to do with the APN Service from Apple (Apple Push Notification Service). The solution he gave me was to reset my iPhone, but seeing that reset doesn't help, I haven't done that yet, since I don't want to lose my data to end up not solving the problem at all.

One of my friends has been having this issues for weeks, too. Very, very strange and hella annoying error. :S

I was exchanging emails with WhatsApp support for weeks. They can be off no help whatsoever.

same here, no notifications

I had exactly the same problem, and I was trying to solve it for 2 days, in addition to setting trials I restored my device several times, but none of them solved the problem. I find a neat solution from Apple forums. I tried it and solved my problem.

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/250814508

1. Download WhatsApp Business.
2. Port your account over to WA Business (click continue after opening the app) without deleting the normal WhatsApp.
3. Try to get someone to test send a few messages to your number. WA Business should push out the notifications.
4. Delete your normal WhatsApp and restart your iPhone.
5. Re-download and reinstall the normal WhatsApp from the App Store. Open the app and allow porting of info to take place.
6. And there! Notifications should come in as per normal again on your normal WhatsApp!!!
7. Delete the WA Business app if you have no use for it.