What is the maximum length of a Push Notification alert text?

Question

What is the maximum length of the alert text of an iOS push notification?

The documentation states that the notification payload has to be under 256 bytes in total,

Answer 1

It should be 236 bytes. There is no restriction on the size of the alert text as far as I know, but only the total payload size. So considering if the payload is minimal and only contains the alert information, it should look like:

{"aps":{"alert":""}}

That takes up 20 characters (20 bytes), leaving 236 bytes to put inside the alert string. With ASCII that will be 236 characters, and could be lesser with UTF8 and UTF16.