Githawk: New beta tester on iOS 12.1 not receiving notifications

Are there items in your inbox?

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Yup. I’ll clarify in OP that that’s what third bullet referred to

Waited 11 minutes now and nothing btw...I’ve waited 2-3 hours yesterday on other test

Do you have ability to send test notifcations from server? Not actual github replies but just confirming your server is working to me. Essentially confirms if it’s a delay or a lack of push receipt at all.

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@ijm8710 There is no server. There’s a great article on how GitHawk implements notifications: Link

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Is there anything else I can provide or do to diagnose this?

Do you get badge updates?

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Can you message here and I’ll let it sit and see please

👋

So, the notofs pull in but only once I open the app. Just realized something. Perhaps is having background refresh off preventing your pseudo-notificaction system from working?

@ijm8710 ya that’s possible. Pretty sure background refresh is essential.

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Let me test once more. Can one of you comment on this again please

Hi

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Test

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Made no difference. I don’t think that’s it

Badge only appears when entering app. Is there something I do that should control the frequency of the fetch

Well if your badges aren’t updating until you enter then (to my knowledge) most likely a bg refresh issue.

Your settings look like this?

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Badge only appears when entering app. Is there something I do that should control the frequency of the fetch

@ijm8710 we use iOSs minimum interval for bg fetch, but the OS decides when to trigger, we have no control. Updates won’t be on real time, but for me at least, they are pretty quick (within the hour).

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@ijm8710 Are you on low-power mode by any chance?

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@Huddie settings are correct for what you said (I’ve be been beta testing for years. I’m the lead tester for reddit, run their entire tracker on the beta subreddit and speak to them weekly so I’m pretty tech savvy :))
Low power mode can’t be on for bg-refresh but like I said that didn’t make a difference

@rnystrom
Yeah I’ve tried waiting several gours. No dice. Not sure if you want logs or whatever. Again 12.1. Toggled push in and off. Nothings getting it to work. Shocked it’s just me

to make a note here. I have enabled the push notification from TF app and I never got any notification from the app. 😢

I don't know how OS decides to send notifications.

@rnystrom and @all I have an update on this. Although I had background refresh on, it was only on for wifi. The important piece of this was that all my testing was done in a wifi environment hence I didn’t think it mattered. Once I enable bg-always the pushes came in.

1) is there a reason that bg-always is required, shouldn’t bg-wifi work if I’m on wifi when testing over half-day intervals
2) is there any way to make these push notifs without bg on at all. Essentially I’m trying to deduce whether this setup can work without a bg reuqirment, with just a bg-wifi requirement or if it requires bg-alwyas
3) recommendation: if this has to be how it is, I would definitely have a remark in changelog once this is introduced that bg-always is required otherwise tons of users will be bewildered on why they can’t get it working
4) how is bg-always on battery life? It’s why I always had it just on for wifi previously

@ijm8710 good to know! I haven't heard if there's any API for detecting bg fetch availability. Would be handy.

I've been meaning to add a "?" button next to the push setting w/ more info on how it works.

is there any way to make these push notifs without bg on at all. Essentially I’m trying to deduce whether this setup can work without a bg reuqirment, with just a bg-wifi requirement or if it requires bg-alwyas

Not unless we add a server component that polls GitHub for notification updates, which I both don't have time for and am concerned for user privacy over.

Hey so @rnystrom complete understand that some bg component is required at this time, but was unclear on if bg-always will be required or if there’s some permissions setting that’s adjustable that would allow for bg-wifi to work as well. Conceptually, I do not see the difference assuming the user is in fact on wifi

Also not related to being an issue, but how is your experience with bg-always on batttery life. My battery is just ok, would this likely cause a noticeable drop in battery life, something almost negligible or something somewhat I between the two?

I also have no notifications on latest Beta version iOS.

@ijm8710 re: battery, haven’t ever had an issue. I use low power mode a lot tho and know that pushes won’t work in that case.

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Oh cool, we can detect low power mode! Maybe we show something in your inbox that if you have notifications enabled, they wont appear?

https://useyourloaf.com/blog/detecting-low-power-mode/

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I wish android-esque there was the option to manually approve certain processes like a bg exception for githawk fetching

@Rnystrom, still haven’t seen your remark on this. I understand notifications will not work when low power mode is on (bg is off). And they will work when bg is fully on. But, again, they do not work when bg is on wifi mode even if you’re on wifi. Have you looked into if there is a permission relating to this. Is there any way around that specifically. If I’m on wifi and bg is enabled, makes no sense why my setting has to be bg-always still and not just by-wifi while on the wifi.

I haven’t, and don’t believe there’s a permission. The OS controls the frequency of alerting.

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I’m assuming you have it currently on background always. Can you switch to background wifi for a bit and test. See if you can see what I’m saying? @Rnystrom

I’m curious if it’s the “cellular data” portion of background refresh and not the background refresh in general that does the fetching. Not sure if this comment makes sense fully.

@Rnystrom were u able to test what I meant?

No sorry, I won’t really have time to dive into this edge case. If you find a solution I’m always happy to accept PRs!

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@ijm8710 you should be able to set bg refresh to whatever you want in your fork

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@huddie can you expand upon that..I’m saying that if you have bg set to work on wifi it won’t work on wifi...don’t think this is an edge axe but basically a major roadblock for notifcations

@ijm8710 I’m saying if @rnystrom is busy and you want to test it out on different “settings”/frequency of bg refresh, you can do it in your personal fork of the repo (if you’ve forked it).

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I’ll probably play around with it but again it’s not the frequency. I’m claiming it you have bg set to fetfg on wifi it won’t fetch at all. The prompt will tell users that they have to have bg-enabled to make it work but I forsee a lot of bug reports when this leaves beta because most users including myself stilll consider bg-wifi as bg being enabled

@ijm8710 ah. Well if you test it and confirm your hypothesis please let us know.

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I have confirmed!

I’ve tested this religiously and it’s 100% @huddie

That’s why I’m saying this is not an edge case

@ijm8710 the best I can suggest is:

1. Create a PR solving this which I’m sure will be accepted
2. Post an article or something that corroborates that bg-refresh’s cellular is different from bg-refresh on WiFi. To me it sounds interesting that something would work on cellular and not WIFI. I could see the opposite. Since this is a new feature (push notifications), I think there could be 100 things that are causing changes and since it’s working for me and others, it seems unlikely that it’s WiFi related. Again, not saying your wrong. Just suggesting you find an article or steps to reproduce that make it clear that this is the issue.

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I am going to doing some researching on 2 for sure tomorrow. All I’m asking is for someone to confirm 2 on their end too (I’ve done this testing but having more than one tester helps!). If they confirm that they can receive bg-wifi notifcations, it’s on ny end, I doubt that’s the case. If they confirm my issue case is correct that’s helpful..all that needs to be done is someone needs to adjust their bg settings for 20 minutes and just see id they come in. I understand there’s a million thighs that go into the app but that specific test is not comprehensively difficult

@ijm8710 let me do some test on that.

I have never received any push notification so far from GitHawk. Also I have been using the app at least more than one time in a day. (Installed all of the TF builds so far)

For some reason, this may be working on this beta version for bg-wifi. Not sure what has changed. Not sure if @rizwankce and @mesqueeb are starting to get them coming in as well as they seemed to be in the same boat as me earlier.

Out of curiosity, is the “intention” that if you’re in low power mode, once you return to having bg, should the notifications that you missed in between catchup to fetch those you may have missed or would it only roll in those subsequent to having fetch turned back on?

I can confirm that on the latest beta and the one before that I think I now successfully receive notifications. I truly love GitHawk now and cannot live without it anymore.

I did some test from my side and I started receiving push notifications now.

Looks like os decides the frequency of fetch based on the app usage. I was able to get push on both wifi and mobile data.

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@rizwankce was yours working on the actual bg-wifi setting as well or bg-always while utilizing wifi? It’s super inconsistent for me right now

@ijm8710 I have selected "WiFi & Mobile Data" in Settings and was able to receive notifications on both WIFI and Mobile data today.

Testing just to confirm that this is still working better :)

@rnystrom hopefully last time I ever tag you on this thread. I think the bg-wifi bg-always thing is no longer an issue, but hey I wasn’t the only one-Mesqueeb and rizwankce had issues as well that fixed themselves at same time👍👍

Revisiting the last useful piece from this thread, I do think an alert that if you have low power mode enabled, notifications will not come (as bg is completely off) would be nice!

I did add these introductions to the new settings info button. Let’s see if anyone has as much trouble with notifications before doing much more.

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