this post was submitted on 16 Nov 2024
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Voyager
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there is no push notification and widget like original Apollo
Push notification cost money iirc.
Push requires having a server to push those notifications. That requires having an entire Voyager server that stores your credentials and periodically checks for new notifications, sending them when it gets them.
Money, yes, but also an issue with having a third party server storing credentials.
Why not use UnifiedPush?
I think that's what Lemmy is looking to add support for soonish.
Iβm not super familiar with UnifiedPush, but it seems like you still need a server to send those notifications. Unless the Lemmy instances themselves start sending them, they have to come from somewhere.
The app can work in the background and periodically check for new messages, just like email clients do with IMAP accounts.
Which would be a pull, not a push.
I think lemmy doesn't currently support push notifications so the app would have to stay awake in the background to check for them
You donβt need to have the app running in the background. Notifications can be pushed from the cloud.
Problem is, that costs money to host and run that job to check for notifications. This is why a lot of small developers end up burying notifications behind a paywall.
I mean yeah, but hosting and running a voyager server that stores our login credentials would be a more complicated and difficult option for what gain? The simplest solution would probably be just waking up the app every so often to check, I think eternity does that
Speaking for iOS, I donβt believe this is possible. iOS has rules around what background processes can and canβt run on-device.
For notifications coming from the internet, in order to preserve battery life, Apple wants cloud APNs to wake up terminated apps to deliver notifications.
I know android does some similar battery preservation stuff around notifications, but Iβm a little less familiar with that.
So then βburyβ it behind a paywall, why is that bad? A server costs money so let the people who want to use that server pay their part. I see no problem with that.
It's neat how the receipt and storage of push 'notes could easily leverage the short-message idea in the original sendmail spec.
Meh, I bought Ultra lifetime after a few months of using Apollo and never even bothered using push notifications. Which is funny, because it was the main thing I missed when I originally switched from Android and RiF in 2020. Voyager is FOSS so it's understandable that there won't be push notifications, as that require servers which cost money, and it also introduces potential security issues. User tags on the other hand, were something Apollo sorely needed, and the dev never got around to it.
TIL iOS finally got widget support a few years ago
I tried to use Voyager on ios 17 to add widget. But, the option is unavailable. Howver Apollo sideloaded can do that.