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

  • qweertz ( qweertz@programming.dev ) English
    21·
    2 years ago

    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

      • qweertz ( qweertz@programming.dev ) English
        2·
        2 years ago

        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 :/)

        • dracs ( dracs@programming.dev ) English
          3·
          2 years ago

          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.

          • qweertz ( qweertz@programming.dev ) 
            1·
            2 years ago

            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)

    • QuazarOmega ( QuazarOmega@lemy.lol ) 
      3·
      2 years ago

      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

      • qweertz ( qweertz@programming.dev ) 
        2·
        2 years ago

        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

        • QuazarOmega ( QuazarOmega@lemy.lol ) 
          2·
          2 years ago

          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)?

          • qweertz ( qweertz@programming.dev ) 
            3·
            2 years ago

            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

  • illegalflyer ( illegalflyer@lemm.ee ) English
    18·
    2 years ago

    Only thing I have a problem with right now is proton mail. Hopefully soon they will be implementing notifications that don’t rely on google play (they said they are working on it)

  • WreckingBANG ( WreckingBANG@lemmy.ml ) Banned
    4·
    2 years ago

    It depends for what Apps you need them. Often Apps like Signal or Element support getting Notifications via a persistent Server connection or asking every so often for Notifications. Even tho i could not find any source, i found that this works with Whatsapp(sadly have to use it) too.

  • toastal ( toastal@lemmy.ml ) 
    3·
    2 years ago

    FYI for the other commenters, UnifiedPush can work thru the Prosody mod_unified_push or any server with a up where Conversations (& its forks like Cheogram, Monocles, Blabber) can be a distributor. This has the added bonus of coming with an awesome decentralized XMPP chat server getting to reuse a single connection & single app to server instead of separate ones. Conversations is the most efficient chat client on Android in terms of resources (battery, network, RAM) so might as well keep it lightweight—which you are probably trying to get push notifications from the likes of Signal or Element, but what is the point when you have an efficient XMPP server for your chat needs?

    However, I think UnifiedPush might be a bit flawed—as if the startup that created ntfy is pushing others to try to adopt their standard instead of getting folks on board with the older & capable MQTT (which also can be ran thru mod_mqtt on your XMPP server). I am not yet sure if this is a tinfoil take or not.

  • shortwavesurfer ( shortwavesurfer@lemmy.zip ) 
    3·
    2 years ago

    I don’t know about Telegram, but I know, at least with Signal, it should work with web sockets, and allow you to get notifications that way. At least that’s how I get my notifications on Molly, which is a fork of signal. While not many applications support it, you might also look into UnifiedPush and ntfy which is a UP app from F-Droid.