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app-notifications-pending-update.md

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description Learn how to use pending update activation to create multi-step interactions in your app notifications.
title App notification with pending update
label App notification with pending update
template detail.hbs
ms.date 07/28/2025
ms.topic how-to
keywords windows 11, windows app sdk, winappsdk, notification, pending update, pendingupdate, multi-step interactivity, multi-step interactions
ms.localizationpriority medium

App notification with pending update

You can use PendingUpdate to create multi-step interactions in your app notifications. For example, you can create a series of notifications where subsequent notifications depend on responses from the previous notifications.

Toast with pending update

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

Overview

To implement a notification that uses pending update as its after-activation behavior:

  1. On your background activation buttons, specify an afterActivationBehavior of pendingUpdate.
  2. Assign a Tag (and optionally Group) when sending your notification.
  3. When the user clicks the button, your background task is activated and the notification stays on-screen in a pending update state.
  4. In your background task, send a new notification with new content using the same Tag and Group to replace the pending notification.

Set the pending update behavior

Note

AppNotificationButton doesn't currently support AfterActivationBehavior. Use the XML payload directly with the AppNotification constructor to set afterActivationBehavior="pendingUpdate" on your buttons.

On your background activation buttons, set afterActivationBehavior to pendingUpdate. This only works for buttons with activationType="background".

using Microsoft.Windows.AppNotifications;

string xml = @"
<toast>
  <visual>
    <binding template='ToastGeneric'>
      <text>Would you like to order lunch today?</text>
    </binding>
  </visual>
  <actions>
    <action
      content='Yes'
      arguments='action=orderLunch'
      activationType='background'
      afterActivationBehavior='pendingUpdate'/>
    <action
      content='No'
      arguments='action=cancelLunch'
      activationType='background'/>
  </actions>
</toast>";

var notification = new AppNotification(xml);
notification.Tag = "lunch";

AppNotificationManager.Default.Show(notification);

Replace the notification with new content

In response to the user clicking the button, your background task is triggered and you replace the notification by sending a new notification with the same Tag and Group. Use AppNotificationBuilder.MuteAudio to mute the audio on replacements in response to a button click, since the user is already interacting with the notification.

var notification = new AppNotificationBuilder()
    .AddText("Ordering your lunch...")
    .MuteAudio()
    .BuildNotification();

notification.Tag = "lunch";

AppNotificationManager.Default.Show(notification);

See also