Privacy @lemmy.ml merlin @lemmy.dbzer0.com 5d ago

How to get push notifications in a degoogled phone?

Hi guys basically as the title says. I have a pixel phone running GrapheneOS and I really don't want to install Play Services. Is there an alternative for me? I need reliable notifications for Telegram and signal. Edit: Thank you all amazing people for helping I learned alot and found best setup for me

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Most libre applications implement their own websockets for this. EDIT: some propriety spyware like WhatsApp use those too, can confirm myself, as I unfortunately have to use it on my GrapheneOS owner profile (which ofc doesn't have the sandboxed GPlay services installed; I could technically use it on my profile for personal proprietary apps, but it would be a major pita) ENDEDIT
(unfortunately Proton uses only Google FCM in most of their apps and doesn't publish them on F-Droid or Accrescent)

However, those can take a strain on your battery since every websocket maintains it's own connection.
This is where UnifiedPush in combination with either nfty or Sunup comes in
(EDIT: I use ntfy myself, also Sunup seems to be quite new, so it might come with some quirks; EDITEND there is also a plugin for your own Nextcloud)

Since Unifiedpush maintains only one connection for every app using it, this takes quite a bit less charge to upkeep
(it's explained quite well on their website, which is hyperlinked)

If you are looking for Unifiedpush support on Signal: Molly is a hardened fork of the client and does support it through Mollysocket

EDIT: If you use Telegram there is Mercurygram. As for Matrix clients, I use Element and Schildichat. All these support UnifiedPush
- Spot on response!
  Just a note: in my experience Mercurygram with ntfy is terribly unreliable, with notifications coming in days later, so I personally ended up enabling its background service anyways, it doesn't look like it's taking up much battery at least
  
  Thx for the kind words!
  
  I left the background service on for all the messengers, it's not like the Unifiedpush ones have anything major to use anyway. This increased the reliability and peace of mind + they never show up as major battery users for me either
  
  You mean unrestricted battery usage? If so, I don't exactly understand how it differs from keeping the unifiedpush integration off and relying on the app, does it make it so that it's only "ready" to be triggered by ntfy when it would otherwise poll the server on its own very frequently (so you end up actually saving some battery)?
  
  does it make it so that it's only "ready" to be triggered by ntfy when it would otherwise poll the server on its own very frequently (so you end up actually saving some battery)?
  
  That's how I understand it, yes. You change the behaviour of the app by configuring it to use UnifiedPush, so there is less background usage to restrict
  
  I see, that makes sense
- I'm using Molly with UnifiedPush for notifications and it works quite well.
  
  So you have set it up over Mollysocket? Do you use your own or a remote instance?
  
  I just haven't got around to setting it up myself yet... (+ I don't have my own server yet, so I can't self host :/)
  
  Yeah, in self hosting MollySocket and my own Ntfy server. I'm in the process of moving it all to my NAS so I don't have to leave my computer on all the time.
  
  I really wish Signal would support it natively.
  
  it's rly cool that you're self hosting this stuff! though I can imagine running your PC 24/7 just for that is quite annoying
  
  also yeah, upstream support for UnifiedPush in the clients for both Signal and Telegram would be great...
  
  But I can imagine that it's not rly a priority for them.
  (I'm not actually skilled enough (yet) to help implement that though either)
- Thanks for your awesome advice.
  
  Happy to help :)
  
  (especially when it comes awesome libre software :p)

47 comments