> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://activitysmith.com/docs/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Channels

> Use channels to target specific users and devices.

Channels let you target specific groups of recipients instead of sending to everyone in an account.

Common use case:

* Different teams should receive different notifications (for example, `marketing`, `developers`, `devops`, `sre`).

Channels are flexible:

* You can assign users, devices, or both to a channel.
* You can choose channels per request using `target.channels`.
* You can keep some [API key](/docs/api-keys) broad and scope other [API key](/docs/api-keys) to specific channels.

## How Targeting Works

Use channel slugs in `target.channels`:

```json theme={null}
{
  "target": {
    "channels": ["ios-beta", "ops"]
  }
}
```

* If `target` is omitted and API key scope is `all`, delivery goes to all recipients in the account.
* If `target` is omitted and API key scope is `channels`, delivery goes to channels assigned to that [API key](/docs/api-keys).
* If `target.channels` is provided, only those channel slugs are targeted.

## Push Notifications

```json theme={null}
{
  "title": "New subscription 💸",
  "message": "Customer upgraded to Pro plan",
  "target": {
    "channels": ["ios-beta", "ops"]
  }
}
```

## Live Activities

```json theme={null}
{
  "content_state": {
    "title": "Nightly database backup",
    "number_of_steps": 3,
    "current_step": 1,
    "type": "segmented_progress"
  },
  "target": {
    "channels": ["ios-beta", "ops"]
  }
}
```

See endpoint docs for full request and response fields:

* [/api-reference/endpoint/push-notification](/docs/api-reference/endpoint/push-notification)
* [/api-reference/endpoint/live-activity-start](/docs/api-reference/endpoint/live-activity-start)