Phone Notifications for SteamVR

Never miss a call or an important iPhone notification while you're in VR.

This is a lightweight Windows app that shows your iPhone's notifications — calls, WhatsApp, iMessage/SMS, Discord, Messenger, Telegram and anything else — as a small, Quest-style card inside any SteamVR game, without interrupting what you're doing.

The notification cards above are not mockups — they are produced by the app's actual NotificationRenderer (the same code that draws them onto the VR overlay). The backdrop is a design backdrop, not a captured game frame.

Notification cards

Each card shows the app icon (color-coded per app), app name, sender, an optional title, the message (wrapped up to 3 lines), and the time — in a lightweight, Quest-style layout with per-app accent colors.

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How it works (and why there is no iPhone app)

The single most important design decision, explained honestly.

iOS does not allow any third-party app — not even one you install on the phone — to read the notifications of other apps. There is no iOS equivalent of Android's NotificationListenerService. So a "notification forwarder" iPhone app cannot see your WhatsApp / Discord / iMessage notifications. Building one would be faking the feature.

So instead of talking to the iPhone directly, we let the notifications land on the PC and read them there — using the Windows UserNotificationListener API (the sanctioned, system-wide notification reader). Two things feed that notification centre:

 iPhone ──Bluetooth──► Microsoft Phone Link ─┐
                                             ├─► Windows notification centre ──► this app ──► SteamVR overlay
 Desktop apps (Discord/WhatsApp/… ) ─────────┘        (UserNotificationListener)              (any game)

• Microsoft Phone Link owns the finicky iPhone↔Windows Bluetooth bridge (calls, iMessage/SMS, and app notifications). It's a polished, Microsoft-maintained product — far more reliable than a hand-rolled Bluetooth stack. We simply read what it surfaces to Windows.
• Desktop apps (Discord, WhatsApp, Telegram, Slack…) post to the same notification centre directly, so those work even without the phone.
• No iOS app. No jailbreak. No cloud. No custom Bluetooth pairing. One-time Windows setup, then it just reads notifications.

Why not read the iPhone directly (ANCS/Bluetooth)?

That's technically possible (Apple's ANCS over BLE) and the code is included as an optional alternative source in src/Ancs. But getting iOS to expose ANCS to a Windows PC requires the PC to advertise an ANCS service solicitation and drive the LE bond itself, and it depends on your Bluetooth adapter supporting the LE peripheral role — it's fragile. Phone Link already solved that exact problem, so piggybacking on it is both simpler and more reliable.

Honest limitations (nothing here is faked)

Want	Reality via the Windows listener
Package identity	UserNotificationListener requires the app to have package identity. One-time setup via a sparse package — see docs/IDENTITY.md.
App icon artwork	The listener gives text + the source app, not per-app artwork for phone notifications. We render a clean colored badge with the app's initial (📞 for calls).
Per-app filtering of iPhone apps	Phone Link posts everything under one Windows app id, so whitelist/blacklist distinguishes Phone Link vs. desktop apps, and we additionally match on text. Desktop apps filter precisely by their own id.
Incoming-call category	The listener has no ANCS-style category, so calls are detected heuristically from the toast text ("incoming call"). Reliable for Phone Link's call toasts.
Message text while phone is locked	If Phone Link/your phone hides previews while locked, only the app name + time come through.

Everything else — sender, title, body, time, calls, messenger apps — comes straight from the notification.

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Features

Overlay (OpenVR)

• Works in every SteamVR game (renders as an overlay app, coexists with the running game).
• Very low CPU/GPU: the card texture is uploaded once per notification; only cheap alpha/transform updates drive the fade + slide animation. Idle = zero work.
• Transparency, fade-in/slide-in and fade-out/slide-out animations.
• Queues multiple notifications and shows them one at a time, newest-wins under flood.
• Anchor modes: follow headset (HUD), fixed in world, near controller, near wrist.

Notification card (Quest-style): app badge, app name, sender, title, message (wrapped), time.

Desktop app (WPF, modern dark UI)

• SteamVR connection status + iPhone (Bluetooth) connection status.
• Test notification button and a live overlay preview.
• Full settings, notification history, and an in-app log window.
• System tray support, start with Windows, start minimized.

Settings: position/anchor, size, opacity, font size, duration, animation speed, per-app whitelist/blacklist, "always show calls", sound on/off + volume, history length.

Reliability / auto-recovery (all handled by supervised background loops):

• SteamVR restarting → overlay re-created automatically.
• Phone / Wi-Fi / Bluetooth reconnecting → ANCS link re-established with backoff.
• Windows waking from sleep → both links re-established.
• Lost connection anywhere → retried forever without user action.

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Project layout (Clean Architecture)

PhoneNotificationsVR.sln
└─ src/
   ├─ Core/       Domain + Application. Pure .NET 8, no infrastructure.
   │              Models, settings, interfaces, the AppFilter and the NotificationDispatcher (the queue).
   ├─ Listener/   Infrastructure: Windows UserNotificationListener source (the real link).  net8.0-windows
   ├─ Overlay/    Infrastructure: OpenVR overlay + GDI card renderer (OVRSharp).             net8.0-windows
   ├─ Ancs/       Infrastructure: OPTIONAL Bluetooth-LE ANCS client (direct-to-iPhone).      net8.0-windows
   └─ App/        Presentation: WPF MVVM desktop app + composition root (DI host).           net8.0-windows

Dependencies point inward only: App → {Listener, Overlay, Core}, Listener/Overlay/Ancs → Core, Core → nothing. The notification source sits behind the INotificationSource interface, so Listener and Ancs are interchangeable — the app ships with Listener wired in.

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Quick start

1. Set up Microsoft Phone Link with your iPhone (Phone Link app ▸ iPhone ▸ follow the Bluetooth pairing wizard). Confirm calls/messages show up on the PC. (Skip if you only want desktop-app notifications like Discord/WhatsApp desktop.)
2. Build: dotnet build -c Release (see docs/BUILD.md).
3. Grant package identity once: run ./packaging/Register-Identity.ps1 from an elevated PowerShell — this is required for the notification-reading API. Full details: docs/IDENTITY.md.
4. Run PhoneNotificationsVR.exe and click Yes on the notification-access prompt.
5. Start SteamVR. The header dots turn green when notifications and SteamVR are connected.
6. Click Send Test Notification to see the card in VR, then tune it in Settings (live preview).

Full install/pairing walkthrough: docs/INSTALL.md. Design details & extension points: docs/ARCHITECTURE.md.

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Common app bundle ids (for whitelist/blacklist)

App	Bundle id
Phone (calls)	com.apple.mobilephone
Messages (iMessage/SMS)	com.apple.MobileSMS
WhatsApp	net.whatsapp.WhatsApp
Discord	com.hammerandchisel.discord
Messenger	com.facebook.Messenger
Telegram	ph.telegra.Telegraph
Instagram	com.burbn.instagram

Tip: turn on the Log tab — every incoming notification logs its bundle id, so you can copy the exact id of any app you want to allow or block.

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Requirements

• Windows 10 (build 19041+) or Windows 11.
• Microsoft Phone Link set up with your iPhone (for iPhone calls/messages/app notifications).
• SteamVR installed.
• .NET 8 SDK + Windows 10/11 SDK to build and to run the one-time identity setup (see docs/BUILD.md, docs/IDENTITY.md).
• An iPhone (iOS 14+ for Phone Link).

The app itself needs no Bluetooth code — Phone Link handles the phone link. Bluetooth on the PC is only needed by Phone Link.

License

Provided as-is for personal use. OpenVR and OVRSharp are under their respective licenses.