How mobile push notifications currently bring centralization to decentralized services, and how we can avoid it, even for mainstream configurations.
Published the 31/01/2025
This post will focus on Android.
Want to try a new distributor ? Nothing to setup, you just need to open the app and grant the requested permissions. It follows the last version of the UnifiedPush specifications: Sunup !
Tapping on #UnifiedPush in the #Dav5X settings instantly picked up UnifiedPush and subscribed, showing my account in brackets. The NextPush Android app showed Davx5 as subscribed.
It seems I had to turn the collection off and on a couple of times before it showed as subscribed, and it still takes about 30 seconds to update. Could that just be #GrapheneOS's default calendar app that I'm using?
While @suraj_sloth is working on the #UnifiedPush connector side in #Chatty I got a chance to add the code for registering/unregistering #Matrix push gateways in #libcmatrix and Chatty (with this I can readily round trip messages up to the UP distributor):
Neue Zeile in der Messenger-Matrix ergänzt: »Unterstützte Push-Benachrichtigungsdienste«. Ich habe nicht zu jedem Messenger ausreichend Informationen gefunden, daher wäre es lieb ❤️ , wenn ihr dazu Feedback abgebt. Korrekturen nehme ich gerne vor. 👇
Teste seit heute die #UnifiedPush Version von #Molly (Signal Fork). Benachrichtigung über neue Nachrichten erfolgt via #ntfy. Bereits nach einem Tag Test lässt sich sagen: Akku-Verbrauch ist geringer als mit #WebSocket bei Signal.
I've been using Unified Push + Element + Fedilab via Nextcloud and NextPush and it's been remarkably simple and reliable while keeping all that sweet, sweet metadata out of the Goog's hungry clutches. Thank you!
Can't wait for Yunohost to support sliding sync so I can shift to ElementX.
This week, next gen @element client, Element-X, and @neochat announced they are supporting #UnifiedPush. This makes 2 more @matrix clients supporting it !
NeoChat the second Linux app officially supporting UnifiedPush, after @tokodon
Guten Morgen. Wer sie noch nicht kennt, sollte unbedingt einen Blick in die Empfehlungsecke werfen. Diese enthält meine aktuellen Empfehlungen zu verschiedenen Themen wie Messenger, Werbeblocker, werbefreies YouTube, Passwort-Manager, Suchmaschinen und Co. 👇
Version 0.4.0 (Codename „All Engines Running“) of Ltt.rs not only brings support for #UnifiedPush but also a UI refresh. The e-mail client for Android now supports Material U / dynamic colors.
Note that Ltt.rs requires an e-mail server that supports #JMAP. (There aren’t many providers that support it so Ltt.rs is currently more for the adventurous / self hosting type user.)
Last week I finished my fake/example/reference linux #UnifiedPush distributor written in rust. This week I started at looking into implementing a distributor with ntfy.sh, I am currently unsure about integrating into an existing app like Notify or building a separate application. You can find my progress here: gitlab.com/j0dev/rust/up_ntfy_… I am also looking into a DBus api to manage/configure a distributor for integration into desktop environments like #Gnome / #Phosh.
Hey ! We're pleased to announce that Ltt.rs [1], an email (JMAP) client, and Mercurygram [2], a new fork of #Telegram, now support #UnifiedPush. And support is being upstreamed to Telegram-FOSS :)
Unofficial, FOSS-friendly fork of the original Telegram client for Android - GitHub - drizzt/Mercurygram: Unofficial, FOSS-friendly fork of the original Telegram client for Android
I've long believed that all apps (at least on Android) should start supporting UnifiedPush[1]. Tools like ntfy could serve as a central hub for notification distribution, allowing anyone to have their own notification server to connect apps and mobile devices. This would ensure greater privacy. This is also why I developed NotiMail: we shouldn't have to rely on the 'big players' for our notifications and data.
Android or iPhone — either Google or Apple delivers our messages — surely? You don't accept that?
Time I Learned: there are freedom-respecting phones.
People who do not want to depend on Google or have them control our devices are using android-compatible but not google-controlled phones, a.k.a. “degoogled phones”. We have been asking (ourselves) for several years if we can have google-free push notifications. Thanks to the developers of the UnifiedPush standard, the answer is now, “yes!”
But why?
You've probably heard of the Observer Effect. Partly influenced by hearing that someone is observing my blog from a social psychology angle relating to attitudes among the open source community, but also I was already thinking I should, I've decided to write more about why I write/build/care about the topics I choose. For a start I wrote a “Why Would I Care?” section for my latest post Google-Free Push Messaging for Google-Free Phones. Here, that section is published as an article on its own.
Why Would I Care?
Why would I care how my push notifications reach my phone? What difference does it make to me?
That's a good question. Inside a building that has a good heating, ventilation and air conditioning system, we don't notice the system, we just feel comfortable. With push notification delivery, part of the answer is the same: the system just does its job and our notifications come through. Whether the delivery channel is controlled by Google or by us or by someone else doesn't change that. The immediate, concrete result is the same. So it's not about wanting it to function differently; that's not why I care.
The difference it makes to me is about freedom, privacy, independence, self-agency. I am happy to have the choice to use any particular company's service, but I am not happy to be forced to use them, to have no choice, if I can't leave no matter how bad it gets. What if I don't like Google monitoring my notifications to know what I'm doing? What if I don't like to live in fear of offending them in some way and being cut off from their service and having no replacement option? What if I just don't want to condone their business model by using it, but I still want to be notified when I have messages?
Push notification delivery is one of the many invisible technical services that underpin our online communication systems. These kinds of services are implicitly considered to be part of the public infrastructure, something that we now assume is available to everyone.
When we allow ourselves to become dependent on any particular company's service, and yet do not regulate it as a public service provider, then we subject ourselves to the company's whims, priorities and values, which are different from ours. They will inevitably act against public interests.
Building publicly owned infrastructure based on open standards and freedom software is therefore essential to ensure the independent provision of services aligned with public needs and values.
I am one of the people who feels it is my place to use, promote and build non-proprietary public services, both for my own mental wellbeing and because I believe it is important for society.
UnifiedPush open-standard push messaging complements degoogled android-compatible phone OS's such as LineageOS.
People who do not want to depend on Google or have them control our devices are using android-compatible but not google-controlled phones, a.k.a. “degoogled phones”. We have been asking for several years if we can have google-free push notifications. Thanks to the developers of UnifiedPush, the answer is now, “yes!”
The open standard UnifiedPush.org has now been created. While not a large number yet, a useful handful of apps already support UnifiedPush, including several matrix and fediverse apps. For its servers and the associated client-side “distributor” component, there are multiple successful implementations deployed.
The current situation is such that anyone can use UnifiedPush on an android-compatible device by installing their choice of UnifiedPush distributor app (which must run in the background), configuring it to connect to their chosen U-P server (compatible with chosen distributor), and then installing any number of U-P-aware apps which will then use it (without needing per-app configuration to do so).
In android-compatible OS ROM projects such as LineageOS, implementing some core support for the UnifiedPush.org standard now seems to me like the right way to go. Exactly what form of support is to be decided.
Involving the OS ROM
Some ways an OS like LineageOS could usefully be involved to improve the UnifiedPush experience are:
ensuring the U-P distributor app has a convenient way to be installed and permitted to run in the background, free from restrictions, because getting this right is critical and if the user installs the distributor manually it can be tricky to get right; (investigate: would it need to be a system app, or some kind of whitelisting (ugh), or be split into a system component and a user component, or what?)
providing a convenient way to let the user (or the OS distribution provider) configure the distributor's U-P server address: perhaps rather than using an ad-hoc UI provided by the distributor app, it could integrate with “accounts” settings.
potentially providing a system settings UI for monitoring the U-P connections and which apps are using them.
Thoughts on the role of microG. The purpose of microG as best I understand is to provide Google compatible APIs to apps which expect Google services. Underneath these APIs, it provides access to a mixture of actual Google services, alternative real services, and fake services. As far as I know it does not so far provide any non-Google APIs, and yet for push notifications the provision of UnifiedPush APIs might be a good fit for fulfilling its overall purpose as a compatibility layer. Or perhaps not, perhaps that is out of scope and should be in LineageOS or another add-on layer instead. I'm sure the folks involved will work out what is best.
Constraints, FCM Fallback, non-Android
Unlike the situation with some other google APIs, it is important to note that an OS compatibility layer such as microG cannot automatically divert the connections made by apps built using Google's FCM, to use U-P instead. The apps must be modified.
However, the inverse is possible: a UnifiedPush aware app can automatically “fall back” to using Google's FCM if U-P support is absent and FCM support is present. See details of the Embedded FCM Distributor in UnifiedPush documentation.
Non-Android devices can use UnifiedPush too, including Linux phones such as PinePhone and Purism Librem. The UnifiedPush D-Bus spec may be relevant. (On locked-down proprietary devices such as Apple's it is unlikely to be possible, nor to make much sense: FAQ.)
Packaging a UnifiedPush Distributor
A U-P distributor app could be built in to an OS or subsystem like microG but there is a significant down-side to that: it would support only one type, or at most a fixed small number of types, of U-P server. Choosing a distributor type is more of a whole OS packaging decision. In cases where the whole OS is related to a service provider of some kind (so not like LineageOS, but perhaps like Murena/Calyx/Graphene etc.), the service provider might choose to run a U-P server for their users and have their distributor automatically connect to it (with user consent/opt-in/opt-out). In the more generic/self-hosted case (like LineageOS) it makes more sense to leave it to the user to install their preferred U-P distributor.
I would love to see distributors of google-free phones, such as Murena, support google-free push notifications. I posted a brief sketch of a UnifiedPush Plan for Murena /e/-OS on their forum, without attempting to go into details of integrating the U-P distributor into the ROM.
History
A rough time line of UnifiedPush development. (From light research and having followed it through its development.)
now: more and more apps use UnifiedPush for google-free push support
Conclusion
Whatever the specifics of how any android-compatible OS ROM project might choose to proceed with google-free push support, the solution space enabled by UnifiedPush now exists. Speaking as one of the people who prefer our devices not to be controlled by and dependent on Google:
UnifiedPush open-standard push messaging complements degoogled android-compatible phone OS's such as LineageOS.
People who do not want to depend on Google or have them control our devices are using android-compatible but not google-controlled phones, a.k.a. “degoogled phones”. We have been asking for several years if we can have google-free push notifications. Thanks to the developers of UnifiedPush, the answer is now, “yes!”
The open standard UnifiedPush.org has now been created. While not a large number yet, a useful handful of apps already support UnifiedPush, including several matrix and fediverse apps. For its servers and the associated client-side “distributor” component, there are multiple successful implementations deployed.
The current situation is such that anyone can use UnifiedPush on an android-compatible device by installing their choice of UnifiedPush distributor app (which must run in the background), configuring it to connect to their chosen U-P server (compatible with chosen distributor), and then installing any number of U-P-aware apps which will then use it (without needing per-app configuration to do so).
In android-compatible OS ROM projects such as LineageOS, implementing some core support for the UnifiedPush.org standard now seems to me like the right way to go. Exactly what form of support is to be decided.
Involving the OS ROM
Some ways an OS like LineageOS could usefully be involved to improve the UnifiedPush experience are:
ensuring the U-P distributor app has a convenient way to be installed and permitted to run in the background, free from restrictions, because getting this right is critical and if the user installs the distributor manually it can be tricky to get right; (investigate: would it need to be a system app, or some kind of whitelisting (ugh), or be split into a system component and a user component, or what?)
providing a convenient way to let the user (or the OS distribution provider) configure the distributor's U-P server address: perhaps rather than using an ad-hoc UI provided by the distributor app, it could integrate with “accounts” settings.
potentially providing a system settings UI for monitoring the U-P connections and which apps are using them.
Thoughts on the role of microG. The purpose of microG as best I understand is to provide Google compatible APIs to apps which expect Google services. Underneath these APIs, it provides access to a mixture of actual Google services, alternative real services, and fake services. As far as I know it does not so far provide any non-Google APIs, and yet for push notifications the provision of UnifiedPush APIs might be a good fit for fulfilling its overall purpose as a compatibility layer. Or perhaps not, perhaps that is out of scope and should be in LineageOS or another add-on layer instead. I'm sure the folks involved will work out what is best.
Constraints, FCM Fallback, non-Android
Unlike the situation with some other google APIs, it is important to note that an OS compatibility layer such as microG cannot automatically divert the connections made by apps built using Google's FCM, to use U-P instead. The apps must be modified.
However, the inverse is possible: a UnifiedPush aware app can automatically “fall back” to using Google's FCM if U-P support is absent and FCM support is present. See details of the Embedded FCM Distributor in UnifiedPush documentation.
Non-Android devices can use UnifiedPush too, including Linux phones such as PinePhone and Purism Librem. The UnifiedPush D-Bus spec may be relevant. (On locked-down proprietary devices such as Apple's it is unlikely to be possible, nor to make much sense: FAQ.)
Packaging a UnifiedPush Distributor
A U-P distributor app could be built in to an OS or subsystem like microG but there is a significant down-side to that: it would support only one type, or at most a fixed small number of types, of U-P server. Choosing a distributor type is more of a whole OS packaging decision. In cases where the whole OS is related to a service provider of some kind (so not like LineageOS, but perhaps like Murena/Calyx/Graphene etc.), the service provider might choose to run a U-P server for their users and have their distributor automatically connect to it (with user consent/opt-in/opt-out). In the more generic/self-hosted case (like LineageOS) it makes more sense to leave it to the user to install their preferred U-P distributor.
I would love to see distributors of google-free phones, such as Murena, support google-free push notifications. I posted a brief sketch of a UnifiedPush Plan for Murena /e/-OS on their forum, without attempting to go into details of integrating the U-P distributor into the ROM.
History
A rough time line of UnifiedPush development. (From light research and having followed it through its development.)
now: more and more apps use UnifiedPush for google-free push support
Conclusion
Whatever the specifics of how any android-compatible OS ROM project might choose to proceed with google-free push support, the solution space enabled by UnifiedPush now exists. Speaking as one of the people who prefer our devices not to be controlled by and dependent on Google:
Made some nice progress on my rust reference 'fake' #UnifiedPush distributor implementation today. Pushed my code publicly and finished the registration part. Started the to work on the message sending and found out the C & golang connector library needs some more love as that too was changed in the spec and never updated. That's for this weekend then I guess.. 😅
Molly now officially supports #UnifiedPush with a separate app, available for download on GitHub and F-Droid through Molly's FOSS repository. Say goodbye to relying on Google for #Signal push notifications. Setting up your MollySocket server is all you need to start receiving notifications. 📡 Big thanks to @S1m for making this possible! ❤️ github.com/mollyim/mollysocket
MollySocket allows getting signal notifications via UnifiedPush. - GitHub - mollyim/mollysocket: MollySocket allows getting signal notifications via UnifiedPush.
I recently learned that it is super easy to run your own #UnifiedPush server if you already have a #NextCloud: - Install the UnifiedPush Provider app in the NextCloud - Install NextPush for Android f-droid.org/en/packages/org.un…
Took me like 5 min and now my #Tusky push notifications go through my own server, how cool is that
I was surprised at my phone ringing last night, until I realised I got a real non-test push notification from the experimental fork of Nextcloud made by Niklas Reimer. It uses @unifiedpush in the #foss and @fdroidorg compatible version of Nextcloud, and notifications don't go through Google Services or the Nextcloud Push gateway.
The Android XMPP client Conversations.im can now act as a UnfiedPush¹ Distributor. This means apps like Tusky can use XMPP as a transport for their push mess...
This is a non-exhaustive list of the first few end-user applications that use UnifiedPush.
Android Name Description Date Platform Since version Docs¹ FluffyChat Matrix chat January 2021 Android v0.26.
This evening I pushed a #Prosody community module that acts as a #UnifiedPush server. It allows apps on your phone to receive push notifications, using #XMPP as the delivery channel instead of Google's proprietary FCM or regular polling.
It uses a protocol devised and implemented by @daniel and all credit goes to him for this idea and first implementations.
It's all experimental stuff, but I'm already using it to get realtime notifications in #Fedilab 🙂
A modern Android smartphone relies on a lot of services, from app stores and calendars to messaging and push notifications. Most of them have open alternativ...
German nation-wide emergency alert exercise message delivered via UnifiedPush as KDE Plasma desktop notification, within a minute of the cell broadcast :) #kde #unifiedpush
Are you a #signalapp user interested in #UnifiedPush? We have recently opened a pull request to add UnifiedPush support to #Molly, a Signal fork. If you want to help out, we are looking for testers! Keep in mind that you will need a server to run the binary.
MollySocket allows getting signal notifications via UnifiedPush. - GitHub - MollySocket/mollysocket: MollySocket allows getting signal notifications via UnifiedPush.
Are there any moves to get #ntfy to use a username and password? I've held off using it so far as the security of only using a topic name for #unifiedpush seems kind of iffy.
If you're new to UnifiedPush, the easiest way to get started is to install the 'ntfy' app (available on #fdroid and #googleplaystore) and open it once.
Then, any apps that support UnifiedPush ( unifiedpush.org/users/apps/ ) will be able to use UnifiedPush once the apps are restarted!
This is a non-exhaustive list of the first few end-user applications that use UnifiedPush.
Android Name Date Platform Since version Docs¹ FluffyChat January 2021 Android v0.26.1 FluffyChat push notifications² Fedilab March 2021 Android v2.39.
UnifiedPush is a set of specifications and free open source tools to help users get more control over how their phone's (or computers's) notifications are handled. You can follow the project at:
The last version of #ntfy is a #unifiedpush distributor ! It will soon reach the @fdroidorg store. It is easy to use - just install it - and easy to self-host if you want to.
