Hi, Ihave a brand new FairPhone 6 and the latest /e/os update. My problem is that the notifications from the Signal Messenger are shown only occasionally. That means, most of the time there is no ringing, no notification symbol in the top bar and no notification banner on incoming Signal messages. Notification are displayed as soon as I open the app. I find this issue very problematic, b/c I miss important updates since I switched to the FP6.
What I tried so far:
made sure notifications are activated in Signal Messenger app settings
made sure notifications are activated globally
allowed unrestricted background usage for Signal Messenger in App battery settings
deactivated notification cooldown
deactivated notification snoozing
restarted device
Still Signal notifications do not show most of the time. However, sometimes in about 1 in 10 cases they do show. But could not recognize any pattern there.
I don’t know what that means, but I expect notifications to work out of the box.
In microG’s app settings I see the following:
Google device registration: off
Cloud Messaging: on
Receive push notifications: greyed out, cannot be enabled
Apps using push notifications: Signal, …
Cloud Messaging settings for Signal:
Allow registration: on
Start app on push message: on
All other app notifications work, e.g. E-Mail, and Threema Messenger. Why would I need any Google stuff to get notifications from Signal, when everything else works without it?
Not all app-notifications work the same way … signal notifications come via gogolitas “Firebase Cloud Messaging” service (FCM formerly known as “Google Cloud Messaging”) per default and “websocket” is the fallback in case FCM is not available/set up (afaik).
And MicroG is your friend in a degooled Android when it comes to using google services (like FCM) that are needed for app functionality.
Maybe your settings might be “incomplete” for FCM as it presumably requires not only activation of “cloud messaging” but “device registration” as well (otherwise the service does not know where to deliver the notifications as it can not identify your device…)
Anyone correct me if I am wrong … but IF that is correct you could in MicroG settings of your device either switch ON device registration (to prove the above and complete settings for FCM) or switch OFF Cloud Messaging (to force signal into using websocket).
OR (following this info from microg)
disable both cloud messaging and Google device registration and reboot
enable only Google device registration and reboot
enable Cloud messaging and reboot
Note, in case you do not want to use FCM: websocket is worth a try but is known to eat significantly more battery power (but that is seemingly also device-dependent to some extent…) the first bullet point of the above list should force signal to use it …
Thank your for all that information. I tried your suggestion forcing Signal to use websocket and the first tests were successful. However, it still could be a “randomly working situation”, so I have to test for a while. Anyway, thank your very much for looking into this!
After some testing, I can now confirm that Signal notifications work as expected with “Google device registration” switched off. The thing that really did the trick in the end was reinstalling Singnal after fiddeling with the settings.