lia

Okay, I have a question that I'd been putting off for literal years.

For most of my life I have exclusively been using #degoogled #Android variants (#LineageOS and #crDroid).

At some point ages ago, Google broke notifications for Android phones without Google Play services. Or something, I'm not sure.

Back then, I just ignored the issue. I remember reading at the time that supposedly you could fix it somehow by hosting your own notification server or whatever, but then this sounded way too complicated and sketchy to me, so I decided to just wait to see if the community comes out with an easy fix.

But now it's 2026 and only a select few of my apps actually send notifications: the standard calendar, Tutamail, KDE Connect and some weather apps. Most other apps, including ones I really want notifications for, don't get through: #ElementX, my bank's app, #Moshidon and so many others.

It's getting on my nerves!

Can anyone give me a pointer as to how all this works these days? I missed out on this entire topic and now it looks daunting.

12:42amWeb
Show threadKurt11h ago
@lianna i have two solutions:
1. allow unrestricted background battery usage in app info
2. additionally install #microG (2 apps) enable device registration and cloud messaging
Show threadJacob Scharmberg5h ago
@lianna some FOSS apps support @unifiedpush. It's an open decentralized alternative to FCM (Google's notification push service).
Show threadS1m5h ago
@jacobscharmberg @lianna @unifiedpush Install Sunup, and you'll get notifications with ElementX and Moshidon
Show threadlia2h ago

@S1m @jacobscharmberg @unifiedpush okay, now I got 4 different recommendations from 3 different people.

what is the standard? where are the drawbacks to each method?

Show threadS1m2h ago

@lianna @jacobscharmberg @unifiedpush

It may sounds like different solutions, but UnifiedPush is a standard (https://unifiedpush.org), and you have the choice between different apps to install to get this feature. And I suggest you Sunup as it is the easiest solution

I see you have received another suggestion to use microG, which is a reimplementation of the Google services, but it will use Google servers, and stay connected to them. And your first post suggests that you want to avoid that

UnifiedPush

UnifiedPush
Show threadlia2h ago

@S1m @jacobscharmberg @unifiedpush Thank you! that makes things much clearer :)

But doesn't UP still send all my notification contents to Mozilla or another such server? Are these self hostable?

Show threadJacob Scharmberg1h ago
@lianna @S1m @unifiedpush yes, it still routes all notifications through a server. This is so that your phone only needs to keep a constant connection to one server to preserve battery. However, you can indeed self-host this. I haven't done that before but the UP website has information on this.