What Firebase Cloud Messaging means for your app's privacy disclosures

Firebase Cloud Messaging is a push and in-app messaging platform from Google. What it involves, whether it needs the tracking prompt, what goes on the App Store labels and the Play Data safety form, and the rejection it is usually behind.

Updated 2026-09-18 · Written from the same rules terms.gg uses to generate documents

What Firebase Cloud Messaging actually does

The transport layer under most Android push and a good deal of iOS push.

What its job necessarily involves

These follow from what the thing is for, so they are true whichever version you installed:

• A registration token per installation.
• Delivery telemetry.

What to open and check in Firebase Cloud Messaging

The settings below decide what the honest answer on the forms is, and they are specific to this SDK rather than to its category:

• Whether you store push tokens against account records, which links a device to a person in your own database.
• How long stale tokens are kept.

Firebase Cloud Messaging does not need the tracking prompt

A device token addresses a notification. It does not follow anyone across companies. So Firebase Cloud Messaging does not on its own require App Tracking Transparency. That is a statement about this SDK, not about your app: add one ad network or one attribution tool and the prompt applies to everything.

Firebase Cloud Messaging in Europe: runs on necessity

You cannot deliver the service without it, so Firebase Cloud Messaging generally rests on the contract with your user rather than on consent. Say plainly in the policy that it is a processor, what it does, and where it runs.

Firebase Cloud Messaging in California: probably not a sale

Firebase Cloud Messaging does its job for you rather than for its own commercial purposes, which normally keeps it a service provider rather than a sale. That depends on your contract saying so, and the standard terms usually do.

Firebase Cloud Messaging on the App Store privacy labels

Apple asks what your app collects, and your app collects whatever its SDKs collect. Firebase Cloud Messaging is generally declared under App Functionality, alongside whatever the rest of your app does for its own reasons.

Firebase Cloud Messaging on the Google Play Data safety form

The form asks two things the labels do not: whether data is shared with anyone else, and whether it is encrypted in transit. For this SDK the honest answer is usually collected but not shared, because it processes on your behalf.

Check Google's own privacy manifest for Firebase Cloud Messaging

Since 2024 Apple has required third-party SDKs on its list to ship a signed privacy manifest declaring what they collect and which sensitive APIs they use, and your app's combined manifest is built from them. That file is the authoritative answer for Firebase Cloud Messaging, it comes from Google, and it changes when they ship.

The rejection Firebase Cloud Messaging is usually behind

The token is treated as not personal data, when it addresses one device and therefore usually is.

What to put in the privacy policy about Firebase Cloud Messaging

• Google named as a processor or a recipient, not hidden behind "our partners".
• What it is for, in a sentence someone would understand without knowing what an SDK is.
• Where it runs, and what makes a transfer outside your region lawful.
• How long the data is kept, which is a question the vendor documents and most policies skip.
• That it processes on your instructions rather than for its own purposes.

Keeping it true after launch

A legal page stops being true the moment the product moves past it, usually by adding a payment provider, an analytics SDK or a sign-in. No store re-checks your pages against your build, so the drift is yours to notice.

• Re-read it whenever you add a dependency that sees user data.
• Re-check what loads on the page after any change: the cookie notice and the policy have to agree.
• Keep the URL stable. Changing where a policy lives breaks every listing that points at it.