Supabase realtime keeps mobile presence honest without polling your database dead

UpdatedSeptember 8, 2026

Polling is the default sin of mobile realtime. A timer fires every five seconds, hits your API, returns nothing new, and drains battery while your Postgres connection pool quietly fills with identical queries. Supabase Realtime exists so you can stop doing that: one websocket connection per client, server-pushed changes, and presence tracking that tells you who is actually online instead of who polled last.

This post covers the three Realtime primitives that matter for production mobile apps — broadcast, presence, and Postgres changes — plus the connection-lifecycle patterns that keep them stable on iOS and Android where the OS kills sockets without asking permission.

This is an excerpt. Read the full post at otf-kit.dev/blog/supabase-realtime-mobile-presence-live — full-stack kits your AI coding agent can actually ship to production. Browse the kits →

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