Swift read userInfo of remote notification

The root level item of the userInfo dictionary is "aps", not "alert".

Try the following:

if let aps = userInfo["aps"] as? NSDictionary {
    if let alert = aps["alert"] as? NSDictionary {
        if let message = alert["message"] as? NSString {
           //Do stuff
        }
    } else if let alert = aps["alert"] as? NSString {
        //Do stuff
    }
}

See Push Notification Documentation