Unfortunately iOS doesn’t allow any app to run permanently in the background.
As a result, new messages in Delta Chat are often displayed quite late.
This problem can be avoided with Apple’s Mail app and an iCloud Mail account.
Apple’s iCloud Mail uses the Apple Push Notification Service and thus displays all incoming messages immediately.
By setting up the same iCloud email account for both Delta Chat and Apple Mail,
it is possible to use Apple Mail as an indicator for new DC messages.
Of course, notifications for Mail must be enabled in iOS.
However, this approach also has a few minor disadvantages:
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Only the sender is displayed in the mail notifications because the messages are encrypted.
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Read receipts are also displayed, but can be switched off in the DC settings.
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A message can trigger two notifications if DC is currently active in the background.
If it bothers you, you can turn off DC’s notifications:
Settings → Delta Chat → Notifications. -
The Mail app’s notification badges can sometimes be seen long after reading the message in DC.
It is possible to disable them: Settings → Mail → Notifications → Badges. -
If you have additional accounts in Mail, the notifications might become a bit confusing.
To mitigate this issue, you can enable banners and disable badges for the account used by DC.
Disable banners and enable badges in return for the other accounts:
Settings → Mail → Notifications → Customize Notifications → choose account.
Also, it is better to use the iCloud Mail account exclusively for DC.
But I would say if push messages are very important to you, these limitations are secondary.
In principle, this method should also work with other providers such as Google.
But their apps are often more problematic than Apple’s mail client in terms of data protection.
In addition, Mail is pre-installed and, as an iOS user, you have an iCloud account anyway.
Why not use both for Delta Chat?