I know your looking for self hosted, but I can recommend pushover. It's got a lot and the apps are amazing, for $5 for a life time license it's great.
this post was submitted on 04 Mar 2026
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I switched frigate to pushover b/c of the image, it was really disappointing that ntfy didn't supported it; pushover it works great at $5 is worth every penny
I’ve already looked at pushover, but discarded it because it’s not self hostable.
For a giggle, what about home assistant?
Sorry, I should have mentioned that the file is a pdf, unfortunately home assistant does not support that https://companion.home-assistant.io/docs/notifications/notification-attachments/#supported-media-types
There is not alternative that is selfhosted to my knowledge. There is PushBullet with a free tier that allows for sending files. You could also use Discord and send messages via their API, and I assume that Matrix has something similar (but I have not looked).
You could also upload them to something else (Paperless or some web/file server) and send a link in your notification. A link can be displayed as a button with actions tag.
Thanks for the idea about sending a link, I'll try that
Instead of asking for a ntfy alternative, could you tell what you want to achieve? Because ntfy has several functions, primarily that of carrying notifications. And it seems that's not what you want to achieve. Maybe you can find it here.
I want to send a file to an iPad from a cron script. Currently I'm attaching it to a mail, but if the file is bigger than the max attachment size it won't be sent. Also in this way I'm using an external service when it's not needed, since both source and destination are on my lan. I tried ntfy because I was already using it for other tasks, so the server was already in place, but then I realized that iPad app is very limited. I also considered to set up a mail server, reachable only within my lan, but since that seems an overkill I'd like to find an alternative.
So your looking for a file share not a notification system, that's the big difference.
Notifications don't tend to have massive file attachments
Let me add specifications I forgot to mention: the file is a pdf and the whole thing should be simple enough for a not tech savvy person. So I'd like to avoid having to browse a list of files etc.
Sounds like you want something like Syncthing instead. There are ios clients for it as well, Mobius gets recommended frequently.
I looked into Syncthing for other reasons in the past, isn't it a sort of Dropbox replacement? I'm not sure how I can achieve what I want with it.
I don’t use the iOS app. I just installed the pwa (click on share - add to Home Screen) and once installed I can send and receive attachments through ntfy.
I have to try this, thanks.
EDIT: unfortunately there's no way to activate notifications in Safari
That has not been my experience. I use this as described saved to the Home Screen. It notifies me as I’d expect and I regularly send attachments across devices.
The self-hosted alternative to ntfy that I know of is gotify, but I have no idea if it supports file attachments, maybe worth a look.
Also ntfy can be self-hosted (I'm already doing that for other reasons) and it supports file attachments. The problem is the iOS app. Unfortunately gotify does not even have iOS support.
How about email? I use ntfy as well but it sounds like email is the right answer for you.
I'm currently using email (not self-hosted for now) but sometimes the file size exceeds 25 MB and it won't get sent. I'm looking for a solution simpler than setting up a mail server.