Basically, what the title says. Do you use any app, that is proprietary, but either has no OSS alternatives or they're all not good enough? If there is an alternative, what keeps you from switching?

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[–] tetris11@lemmy.ml 8 points 2 months ago (1 children)

https://unifiedpush.org/

[–] GolfNovemberUniform@lemmy.ml 2 points 2 months ago (2 children)

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.

[–] tetris11@lemmy.ml 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

How does Element and Signal implement push notifications?

[–] GolfNovemberUniform@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (2 children)

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.

[–] JustMarkov@lemmy.ml 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Molly (a hardened Signal mobile client fork) has a UnifiedPush version.

[–] ReversalHatchery 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

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?

[–] GolfNovemberUniform@lemmy.ml 2 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] ReversalHatchery 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] GolfNovemberUniform@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] ReversalHatchery 1 points 2 months ago

Official Signal app. It asks Google to check Signal servers for notifications and to send them to you if there are any.

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.

[–] tetris11@lemmy.ml 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Ah okay, thanks for the insight. I don't have Gapps (MicroG or otherwise), so I do wonder how these services deliver their notifications.

[–] huginn@feddit.it 3 points 2 months ago

If it's not using GCM then it must be long polling, unless signal servers are set up to use a 3rd form of push (APNS for iOS, GCM for Android)

[–] ReversalHatchery 1 points 2 months ago

Element and Davx5 supports it too