element-android: Missing push notifications (Google Play variant)
Centralising #5028 #5016 #4862 #4393
We’re getting reports that the google play variant of the app is missing/skipping notifications, this also manifests as notifications not being marked as read when reading from other sessions
To help troubleshoot this
- What date and time did the sender send the missed message (with timezone information) - We’ll cross reference with push server outages
- Are you using multiple clients, if so, have any of the notification settings been modified?
- Does the issue happen for all rooms/dms?
- Are you running a private homeserver, if so do you know the version?
{homeserver_url}/_synapse/admin/v1/server_versioneg https://matrix-client.matrix.org/_synapse/admin/v1/server_version
- Whilst having the issue, screenshot the list in Settings -> Advanced settings -> Push rules. We’re looking to see if a rule has incorrectly started filtering out messages
- Does Element receive raw pushes? A raw
Pushcounter can be displayed with Advanced settings -> EnableDeveloper mode-> EnableShow debug info on screen.
- Does switching room notifications to
noneand back toall messagesfix the issue?
| PUSH RULES - 1 | PUSH RULES - 2 |
|---|---|
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| RAW PUSH COUNTER | ELEMENT WEB NOTIFICATION SETTINGS | ELEMENT WEB ROOM SETTINGS |
|---|---|---|
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About this issue
- Original URL
- State: closed
- Created 2 years ago
- Reactions: 7
- Comments: 41 (19 by maintainers)





It’s still an issue on 1.6.5. Notifications works only when app is on foreground.
It’s looking good: Users running Element-Android 1.4.0 Flavour GooglePlay are reporting that they are no longer missing notifications when using Wi-Fi.
Stop waiting, because this Issue (#5038) is marked as resolved in v1.4.0 😃
I believe I’ve found the cause, a temporary workaround (where possible) is to disable wifi and rely on mobile data #5132
I found the solution for my case. As you said Element creates a new token with firebase. In my case my Pi-Hole DNS blocks the needed domain
firebaseinstallations.googleapis.com. The responsible blocklist was from quidsup as shown in issue #62.I hope the info helps others too.
thanks again @ouchadam
I can confirm that this is still an issue on version 1.5.32, since my mom is on that version and she also doesn’t get notifications unless the app has recently been opened. Me and all my personal matrix contacts are on the matrix.org home server. Are there other software versions which one should check, like Google Play Store for example?
Element 1.6.3, still having this issue. Probably because of the old android? (v9). Push notifications are working only if I open the app. Otherwise no notifications in the background
And as of yesterday, Play gives you the update! I am testing it, because undependable notifications did earn me much poking from my wife (who I “slightly influenced” to use Element as our family chat…)
Unfortunately I’m not able to confirm if disabling wifi on a per app basis is the same as fully disabling wifi as I don’t have a device running a version of android with this feature, stock android and my personal devices only have the option to disable mobile data (I may have missed the option somewhere 🤔 )
from the app point of view, it’s checking if the system’s current active network is a wifi connection, so it’s possible the disabling wifi per app could work if the OEM/OS has sandboxed the active network
https://github.com/vector-im/element-android/blob/develop/vector/src/gplay/java/im/vector/app/gplay/push/fcm/VectorFirebaseMessagingService.kt#L190 https://github.com/vector-im/element-android/blob/develop/vector/src/main/java/im/vector/app/core/network/WifiDetector.kt#L33
we are in the process of creating the next release, so hopefully it won’t be too long of a wait 🤞
@ouchadam The notifications that did come through after the testing did display, make noise, and vibrate.
@Brsph thanks for this! to double check, are the notifications displayed but make no sound/vibration?
another report of the firebase token error in the android:matrix.org room
Specs: Pixel 6, Android 12
Clients: Element for web, Linux, and Android The only notification setting I change is to only get them for mentions in chat rooms.
Noticed the notifications not coming through as of today, Jan 28. Pings that I wasn’t notified about from my phone delivered at the following times, all EST. Most were DMs unless stated otherwise.
Basically I got none of the pings on my phone.
As far as I can tell, it’s happening for all rooms and DMs.
I’m not running a private homeserver.
Starting some testing right now. I flipped a chat room to ping me for all messages and I did get a notification on my phone at 6:50 PM EST. I also have Element for Linux open.
Three minutes after the initial pings and I’m not getting the notifications anymore on my phone despite them still coming in on my desktop. Maybe it’s because it’s a lot of notifications back-to-back.
I closed the app on my desktop and checked the notification that was already on my phone to clear it, and sure enough there was another ping as the conversation continued. Mind you, these are not mentions. This is just having a notification for every message in the room. An actual mention didn’t work for me earlier in the day.
Attached are the push rules during this 6:50 test.
Raw pushes are also coming in during this test.
To the extent it is helpful, I turned on the push counter on my Android device and it went from 1520 to 1522 when I received a message but I did not get a notification. I am running a private homeserver at version 1.51.0, and the message was sent at 11:19am EST (UTC-5).
I am hesitant to raise this because it is not entirely consistent, but I also have another datapoint that may be helpful and it would be interesting to see if anyone else can confirm. If for a room I select notifications for “All messages” in the Android app I see that a new room specific rule is added to the push rules list and logging into Element-web shows that notifications for the room is set to “All messages” instead of “Default”. When this is the case I seem to not get notifications some of the time. However, if I use Element-web to change notifications back to “Default”, that room specific push rule is removed and I then do seem to consistently get notifications (at least in my testing so far). This is not perfect because it is not entirely consistent, but perhaps this points towards the room specific rule or push rules in general being the root cause. I hope this is not a red herring due to its inconsistency, and perhaps this is just connected to what people have already noticed about resetting notifications helping in some instances. I will try to do some more testing and will report back anything else I can figure out.
Possibly. I tried it, and it worked. Will try a bunch of time more and see if it was just a fluke or really fixed it for me.