App notification collections

Use collections to organize your app's notifications in Notification Center. Collections help users locate information more easily and allow developers to better manage their notifications.

A messaging app, for example, can separate notifications by chat group. Each group title ("Comp Sci 160A Project Chat", "Direct Messages", "Lacrosse Team Chat") is a separate collection. Notifications are grouped as if they were from a separate app, even though they all come from the same app. For a more subtle way to organize notifications, see App notification headers.

For more information about app notifications, see App notifications overview.

Create a collection

When creating a collection, provide a display name and an icon, which are shown in Notification Center as part of the collection's title. Collections also require a launch argument so your app can navigate to the right location when the user clicks the collection title. Create the collection by calling SaveToastCollectionAsync.

using Windows.UI.Notifications;

var collection = new ToastCollection(
    "MyToastCollection",
    "Work Email",
    "NavigateToWorkEmailInbox",
    new Uri("ms-appx:///Assets/workEmail.png"));

await ToastNotificationManager.GetDefault()
    .GetToastCollectionManager()
    .SaveToastCollectionAsync(collection);

Send a notification to a collection

Use AppNotificationBuilder to construct the notification content, then call GetToastNotifierForToastCollectionIdAsync to get a notifier scoped to the collection.

using Microsoft.Windows.AppNotifications.Builder;
using Windows.UI.Notifications;
using Windows.Data.Xml.Dom;

// Build notification content with Windows App SDK
var payload = new AppNotificationBuilder()
    .AddText("Adam sent a message to the group")
    .BuildNotification()
    .Payload;

// Deliver to a collection using the WinRT API
var doc = new XmlDocument();
doc.LoadXml(payload);
var toast = new ToastNotification(doc);

var notifier = await ToastNotificationManager.GetDefault()
    .GetToastNotifierForToastCollectionIdAsync("MyToastCollection");
notifier.Show(toast);

List all collections

Retrieve all collections created for your app by calling FindAllToastCollectionsAsync.

var collectionManager = ToastNotificationManager.GetDefault().GetToastCollectionManager();
var collections = await collectionManager.FindAllToastCollectionsAsync();

Update a collection

Update a collection by creating a new ToastCollection instance with the same ID and calling SaveToastCollectionAsync.

var collectionManager = ToastNotificationManager.GetDefault().GetToastCollectionManager();

var updatedCollection = new ToastCollection(
    "MyToastCollection",
    "Updated Display Name",
    "UpdatedLaunchArgs",
    new Uri("ms-appx:///Assets/updatedPicture.png"));

await collectionManager.SaveToastCollectionAsync(updatedCollection);

Remove a collection

Remove a collection by calling RemoveToastCollectionAsync with the collection ID. Any notifications in the collection are also removed from Notification Center.

var collectionManager = ToastNotificationManager.GetDefault().GetToastCollectionManager();
await collectionManager.RemoveToastCollectionAsync("MyToastCollection");

Remove notifications within a collection

Use the Tag and Group properties to identify and remove individual notifications within a collection by calling Remove, or clear all notifications at once with Clear.

var collectionHistory = await ToastNotificationManager.GetDefault()
    .GetHistoryForToastCollectionAsync("MyToastCollection");

// Remove a specific notification
collectionHistory.Remove(tag, group);

// Or clear all notifications in the collection
collectionHistory.Clear();

See also

• App notifications overview