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> There's no decentralized way to get a push notification onto a Google/Android phone What is a "push notification" exactly?

freeone3000 2y ago
A notification delivered “by” a phone application when that application is not necessarily running. They’re “notifications” in common speech but there’s also stuff like “now playing” and live activities and rich content that are also “notifications” but do require the app to run.
- orblivion 2y ago
  That's not really what I mean. The person I was replying to was saying that I can't get push notifications without Google's centralized stuff. ntfy/UnifiedPush appears to do just that, so I'm wondering what is missing here.
  - YarickR2 2y ago
    They are doing that by polling private servers, which is sometimes less efficient power-wise, and sometimes notifications are being delivered slower than in case of using Google-provided mechanism (FCM). We've been using ntfy for alerting, using our private server and running ntfy client in polling mode, and I do not see significantly increased battery usage by the ntfy client; Android 15.
    - orblivion 2y ago
      So ntfy Android app polls a ntfy service. (Which is more efficient than each app polling separately) What does Google's Android library do if not also poll? Does it run a server on the phone? Does it get special signals from cell towers that most apps don't have access to?
      - freeone3000 2y ago
        It also polls, it just does it as part of the OS. Power saving by the OS can often interfere with apps like nfty that want a long-running background process, especially if they haven’t been opened in a while.
        orblivion 2y ago
        Okay, thank you. From what you're saying, it doesn't sound like the OS-based polling would be more power efficient, as someone in this chain suggested, just more reliable. Though, I think you can just turn off battery optimization for the ntfy app, in which case I'd expect them to be on par. If that's right, it seems like ntfy with battery optimization turned off is effectively a "real" push notification system.

freeone3000 2y ago

A notification delivered “by” a phone application when that application is not necessarily running. They’re “notifications” in common speech but there’s also stuff like “now playing” and live activities and rich content that are also “notifications” but do require the app to run.

orblivion 2y ago
That's not really what I mean. The person I was replying to was saying that I can't get push notifications without Google's centralized stuff. ntfy/UnifiedPush appears to do just that, so I'm wondering what is missing here.
- YarickR2 2y ago
  They are doing that by polling private servers, which is sometimes less efficient power-wise, and sometimes notifications are being delivered slower than in case of using Google-provided mechanism (FCM). We've been using ntfy for alerting, using our private server and running ntfy client in polling mode, and I do not see significantly increased battery usage by the ntfy client; Android 15.
  - orblivion 2y ago
    So ntfy Android app polls a ntfy service. (Which is more efficient than each app polling separately) What does Google's Android library do if not also poll? Does it run a server on the phone? Does it get special signals from cell towers that most apps don't have access to?
    - freeone3000 2y ago
      It also polls, it just does it as part of the OS. Power saving by the OS can often interfere with apps like nfty that want a long-running background process, especially if they haven’t been opened in a while.
      - orblivion 2y ago
        Okay, thank you. From what you're saying, it doesn't sound like the OS-based polling would be more power efficient, as someone in this chain suggested, just more reliable. Though, I think you can just turn off battery optimization for the ntfy app, in which case I'd expect them to be on par. If that's right, it seems like ntfy with battery optimization turned off is effectively a "real" push notification system.