Poes

Poes is a tool that lets iOS developers send test push notifications directly to the iPhone simulator on their Mac. Instead of dealing with the usual complexity of setting up a real server to test how an app handles notifications, you can just type a simple command in your terminal and instantly see the notification pop up in the simulator.

You run the tool from your Mac's command line, providing details like your app's bundle identifier (a unique string like "com.example.app"), a title, and a message body. The tool then builds the correct JSON data format that iOS expects for push notifications and delivers it straight to the simulator. The only required piece of information is the app's bundle identifier — everything else falls back to sensible defaults, so you can fire off a test notification with minimal typing.

This is primarily for iOS developers and quality assurance testers who need to verify that their app handles incoming notifications correctly. For example, if you are building a messaging app and want to confirm that a notification with a specific title displays properly, or if you need to test how your app responds when it receives a notification with a badge number, this tool makes that a one-step process rather than a complicated server setup exercise.

One notable design choice is that the core logic lives in a separate framework module rather than being baked directly into the command-line tool. The README explains this was done intentionally to make it straightforward to eventually wrap the tool in a graphical Mac app with a visual interface, rather than just a command-line utility. The project is built in Swift and requires Xcode 11.4 or newer.