this post was submitted on 04 Sep 2024
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There already was a post like this this year but now my answer is "a standardized push notification system (most likely federated) that's actually possible to be implemented in a user friendly way". Google doesn't want to encrypt theirs afaik and apparently some people are concerned about the traditional "every app is responsible for its own notifications" approach consuming much more battery, even though I didn't notice it myself (I guess it's possible if you have 50+ apps installed but it's not something that should be a thing in the first place).
This ready exists. I forget what it's called.
https://unifiedpush.org/
I know about that but afaik almost nobody uses it. The only app I know that supports it is Mercurygram which is a Telegram client.
How does Element and Signal implement push notifications?
Idk about Element but Signal uses the Google's insecure implementation if the device has gapps installed and it uses the traditional system which is not push if gapps are not installed.
Molly (a hardened Signal mobile client fork) has a UnifiedPush version.
I was just thinking, how does one stop signal from sending the notifications to google, when moving to Molly with UP? is that automatic somehow?
Molly FOSS and Molly with UP replace the Google's notification system with websocket and UnifiedPush respectively for its own notifications. Google (hopefully) doesn't have access to all notifications you get on your phone but only to those sent to apps that utilize their push implementation which Molly doesn't use.
yes, but while you use the official signal app, doesn't it work so that signal servers always send the notification to google's appropriate servers?
if that's right, how is it being stopped?
on Matrix, the Element mobile app has a menu for manually unregistering the push targets.
Afaik Signal servers have nothing to do with it. There are 3 possible situations depending on what app you choose.
Official Signal app. It asks Google to check Signal servers for notifications and to send them to you if there are any.
Molly FOSS. It connects directly to Signal servers without any push middleman.
Molly UP. It asks the push notifications provider you choose (but not Google) to check Signal servers for notifications and to send them to you if there are any.
Ultimately, it's the apps and not the servers who decide if they want to use Google's services or not.
I don't think that's how push notifications work. It would not be instant, and very frequent polls are very resource intensive, even more if you had to do it for the servers of a million different apps.
UnifiedPush has a diagram here, and the popular proprietary push providers should work the same way too.