WhatsApp Notifications

Overview

• Source: https://developers.facebook.com/docs/whatsapp/cloud-api/get-started
• Image Support: No
• Attachment Support: No
• Message Character Limits:
  • Body: 1024

Account Setup

To send WhatsApp messages via Apprise, you must first configure your Meta WhatsApp Cloud API account. Follow these steps:

1. Create a Meta Developer Account
   Go to Meta for Developers and log in or create an account.
2. Create a WhatsApp App
   From the Meta Developer Dashboard, create a new App and add WhatsApp as a product.
3. Generate a Permanent Access Token
   • Navigate to your app’s WhatsApp > API Setup section.
   • Select or create a System User, then assign a role and generate a permanent access token with whatsapp_business_messaging permissions.
   • This token is used in the Apprise token field.
4. Locate Your From Phone Number ID
   This is not your actual phone number. It’s a numeric ID assigned by Meta to the sender number.
   You can find it in your WhatsApp App > API Setup section under Phone Numbers.
5. Register Your Recipient Number(s)
   • During sandbox testing, you must verify any phone number you wish to message through Meta’s interface.
   • For production, your business must be verified and have the appropriate messaging tier.
6. (Optional) Create and Approve Message Templates
   • Navigate to WhatsApp > Message Templates.
   • Create a template (e.g., hello_world) and await approval.
   • Templates allow structured messaging with variables (e.g., {{1}}, {{2}}) and can be used with Apprise’s template: prefix. This is explained further below.

Once everything is in place, you’re ready to send WhatsApp messages through Apprise.

Syntax

Valid syntax is as follows:

• whatsapp://{token}@{from_phone_id}/{targets}
• whatsapp://{template}:{token}@{from_phone_id}/{targets}

Parameter Breakdown

Variable	Required	Description
token	Yes	This is the Access Token associated with your Meta WhatsApp App
from	Yes	This is the From Phone ID associated with your Meta WhatsApp App; this isn’t to be confused with your actual phone number. The ID is a separate assignment (about 14 digits long)
targets	Yes	The target individuals on WhatsApp you wish to notify
template	No	You can optionally specify a template_name here (such as hello_world which is the default one created once you set yourself up your Meta App). This causes Apprise to pull from your template defined.
lang	No	If you’ve defined a template to reference, you can optionally over-ride the default language of en_US to reference a different version of the template specified.

Global Parameters

Variable	Description
overflow	This parameter can be set to either split, truncate, or upstream. This determines how Apprise delivers the message you pass it. By default this is set to upstream 👉 upstream: Do nothing at all; pass the message exactly as you received it to the service. 👉 truncate: Ensure that the message will fit within the service’s documented upstream message limit. If more information was passed then the defined limit, the overhead information is truncated. 👉 split: similar to truncate except if the message doesn’t fit within the service’s documented upstream message limit, it is split into smaller chunks and they are all delivered sequentially there-after.
format	This parameter can be set to either text, html, or markdown. Some services support the ability to post content by several different means. The default of this varies (it can be one of the 3 mentioned at any time depending on which service you choose). You can optionally force this setting to stray from the defaults if you wish. If the service doesn’t support different types of transmission formats, then this field is ignored.
verify	External requests made to secure locations (such as through the use of https) will have certificates associated with them. By default, Apprise will verify that these certificates are valid; if they are not then no notification will be sent to the source. In some occasions, a user might not have a certificate authority to verify the key against or they trust the source; in this case you will want to set this flag to no. By default it is set to yes.
cto	This stands for Socket Connect Timeout. This is the number of seconds Requests will wait for your client to establish a connection to a remote machine (corresponding to the connect()) call on the socket. The default value is 4.0 seconds.
rto	This stands for Socket Read Timeout. This is the number of seconds the client will wait for the server to send a response. The default value is 4.0 seconds.
emojis	Enable Emoji support (such as providing :+1: would translate to 👍). By default this is set to no. Note: Depending on server side settings, the administrator has the power to disable emoji support at a global level; but default this is not the case.
tz	Identify the IANA Time Zone Database you wish to operate as. By default this is detected based on the configuration the server hosting Apprise is running on. You can set this to things like America/Toronto, or any other properly formated Timezone describing your area.

Template Variables

The templates you generate allow you to specify {{1}} and {{2}}, etc which are substituted during the Apprise runtime. To pre-set these values, simply leverage the : (colon) prefix in front of the index you wish to define.

?:3=My Value for example would assign My Value to {{3}} during the runtime. You must identify all indexes defined or you will get an error from the upstream server.

If you wish to assign the body or type from Apprise, these special keywords are specified instead with the : (colon) prefix providing the mapping/over-ride. For example: ?:body=1 would be accepted and would assign {{1}} the contents of the body passed into Apprise.

Note

1. The template header must be set to either ” (empty) or assigned content.
2. Variables in the message body, if any, must use the number format, e.g. {{1}}, as opposed to the named variables format, e.g. {{order_id}}

Examples

Send a WhatsApp Notification:

# Test out the changes with the following command:
apprise -b "Test Message" \
  "whatsapp://token@from_phone_id/to_phone_no/"

# Templates can be handled like so:
apprise -b "Test Message" \
  "whatsapp://template_name:token@from_phone_id/to_phone_no/"

# If you have defined {{1}} and {{2}} tokens, you can assign them values like so:
apprise -b "Test Message" \
  "whatsapp://template_name:token@from_phone_id/to_phone_no/?:1=the data i want put here&:2=more data here"

# The :<id> is how you map {{<id>}}elements. If you want to associated the body or
# message type with an id, then there are 2 reserved keywords that you can use for this:
# The below would make sure the Apprise Body value would be placed in the {{1}} element:
apprise -b "Test Message" \
  "whatsapp://template_name:token@from_phone_id/to_phone_no/?:body=1"

# You can mix and match the keywords and types:
apprise -b "Test Message" \
  "whatsapp://template_name:token@from_phone_id/to_phone_no/?:body=2&:type=3&1:MyID1Value"

# It's up to the developer to make sure that all of the {{1}}, {{2}}, etc are assigned correctly