Why is my push notification text truncated and my GIF not playing on Android?

This is standard Android behavior: the system notification shade, not Pushwoosh, decides how much of your text is shown.

Truncated text

Android does not impose a character limit on push notifications. In its collapsed state the notification shade renders only about one line of body text and truncates the rest; the full text becomes visible when the notification is expanded. (The payload itself is limited — the Pushwoosh data object is capped at 4 KB.)

Solution: ship an expandable notification.

1. Create a custom notification factory. Follow our guide on Customizing Push Notifications for Android.
2. Apply an expandable style inside your factory. Use NotificationCompat.BigTextStyle for long text (or NotificationCompat.BigPictureStyle for images), as described in the Android developer documentation on expanded notifications.

If you do not use a custom layout, keep the body text short — roughly one line — so nothing important is cut off in the collapsed view. The exact cut-off point depends on the device, OEM skin and font size, so there is no fixed character count to target.

GIFs displaying as static images

Android’s notification system renders a GIF as a still image; it does not animate media in the notification shade.

Solution: animating a GIF requires custom development — your application has to render the animation itself inside a custom notification view. This is an advanced customization that goes beyond standard SDK functionality.