Firebase

Firebase is Google's app platform. Your app uses it for two things: delivering push notifications, and reporting crashes so we can fix problems you'd otherwise never hear about.

It's free at the volumes an app like this uses, and takes about fifteen minutes.

Create the project

At console.firebase.google.com → Create a project.

• Name it after your company
• Google Analytics is optional — enabling it costs nothing and gives you basic usage figures. Either choice is fine.

Sign in with a Google account that belongs to your company. It doesn't have to be the same one as your Play Console, though it's simpler if it is.

Give us access

Gear icon → Project settings → Users and permissions → Add member → the email we give you → role Editor.

Editor lets us register the app, download configuration and set up notifications. It can't add or remove people, or change billing — those stay with you as Owner.

Send us the Project ID

On that same Project settings page, just under the project name. It looks like yourcompany-4f2a1.

It is not the display name. If you send us "YourCompany" instead of yourcompany-4f2a1, we'll come back and ask.

Please don't add the apps yourself

We'll register the iOS and Android apps once we have access.

They have to be created with exactly the right bundle ID and package name — the ones from your Apple and Play setup. If they're registered with even a slightly different value, the app builds fine and then silently fails to receive notifications, which is an unpleasant thing to discover later.

Push notifications need your Apple key

Once we've registered the iOS app, the APNs key from your Apple setup gets uploaded here. That's the link between Apple's notification system and Firebase.

Without it, everything builds and installs normally and iPhone notifications simply never arrive. There's no error to see. If you're sending us the APNs key already, we'll handle this.

What to send us

• Project ID — the yourcompany-4f2a1 one
• Confirmation you've added us as Editor

Nothing sensitive here. Firebase access is granted by invitation, so there's no key to send.