I originally wrote this back in 2015 as an article for troubleshooting APNs traffic on a Profile Manager server. But it turns out that troubleshooting push notification communications between macOS Server and Apple’s Push Notification is basically the same as troubleshooting the apsd client on macOS. Basically, we’re gonna’ put the APNs daemon, apsd, into debug mode. To enable APNS debug logging, run these commands:
defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.apsd APSLogLevel -int 7
defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.apsd APSWriteLogs -bool TRUE
killall apsd
Then use tail -f to watch the apsd.log file at /Library/Logs/apsd.log. Be wary, as this can fill up your system. So to disable, use these commands:
defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.apsd APSWriteLogs -bool FALSE
defaults delete /Library/Preferences/com.apple.apsd APSLogLevel
killall apsd
