UnifiedPush notifications not working, have to manually open app for notification to display

[TinfoilSubmarine]

Steps to reproduce

1. Receive message
2. See that message is actually received by UnifiedPush receiver (Ntfy android app)
3. Wait indefinitely for notification to arrive, or until I manually open Element X

Outcome

What did you expect?

Notification should show up within a reasonable amount of item of receipt

What happened instead?

Have to manually open Element X to make notification appear

Your phone model

Pixel 5

Operating system version

LineageOS 22.2

Application version and app store

25.05.4 (F-Droid)

Homeserver

Synapse 1.131.0

Will you send logs?

Yes

Are you willing to provide a PR?

Yes

[jmartinesp]

ERROR elementx: [Push/Notification/DefaultNotifiableEventResolver] Unable to resolve event: $17490588298ySzRR:domain.
org.matrix.rustcomponents.sdk.ClientException$Generic: msg=error sending request for url (https://matrix.domain/_matrix/client/v3/rooms/!a-room:matrix.org/context/$17490588298ySzRR:domain?limit=0&filter=%7B%22lazy_load_members%22%3Atrue%7D), details=SdkError(Http(Reqwest(reqwest::Error { kind: Request, url: "https://matrix.domain/_matrix/client/v3/rooms/!a-room:matrix.org/context/$17490588298ySzRR:domain?limit=0&filter=%7B%22lazy_load_members%22%3Atrue%7D", source: hyper_util::client::legacy::Error(Connect, ConnectError("dns error", Custom { kind: Uncategorized, error: "failed to lookup address information: No address associated with hostname" })) })))

From the logs it looks like the app doesn't have internet connectivity when trying to fetch the event associated with the notification. On recent Android OS versions this can happen because Doze stops the app from accessing the network in background, at the moment there's no real solution while using NTFY, there are other clients like Sunup that seem to support waking up the app, although I'm not 100% confident they'll fix the issue.

What seems to work better is to remove background usage restrictions in both the push client app and Element X Android.

[drrossum]

I see this same problem in 202506000.apk. I'll revert to 202505030.apk for now as that version was still working, I believe.

[bmarty]

I see this same problem in 202506000.apk. I'll revert to 202505030.apk for now as that version was still working, I believe.

Probably due to #4358. Can you try to open the ntfy app (or the app you're using as a Unified Push distributor), remove the subscription manually and then kill and restart Element X to see if it fixes the problem?

[drrossum]

I don't really want to risk losing a working setup, with 20250503. I don't use ntfy but microg.

I've had situations, admittedly years ago, where apps would not re-register once I removed their subscription..

[TinfoilSubmarine]

What seems to work better is to remove background usage restrictions in both the push client app and Element X Android.

I've been trying this workaround and having limited success. Just now I tested and the notification was immediately received by the Ntfy app (seen in logcat), but took another ~1 minute to actually display the Element notification.

[drrossum]

IIUC recent Android versions don't allow apps to run in background much. The push notification receiver needs to have permission to wake up the respective app, which, once it is woken up, is responsible for handling the push notification, fetching the event data, and display the user notification.

In your case, I wonder if Ntfy has all the required permissions?

In my case, MicroG does have the permissions, and versions 20250503 and earlier work flawlessly.

[drrossum]

I see this same problem in 202506000.apk. I'll revert to 202505030.apk for now as that version was still working, I believe.

Probably due to #4358. Can you try to open the ntfy app (or the app you're using as a Unified Push distributor), remove the subscription manually and then kill and restart Element X to see if it fixes the problem?

This (re-registering the Google Cloud Messaging push service) does not solve the problem for me. So I reverted to 202505030.apk again.

[takiainen]

Same issue here with microg and ntfy. Changed ntfy to Conversations, which worked for some time, but stopped working now as well.

Everything is set to "not optimized" etc. I have tried it all.

[takiainen]

Also my partner has similar issue. This issue has been present for several months.

[spaetz]

A variety of issues can prevent the UnifiedPush distributor from working, this is what often helps:

1. exempting the UnifiedPush distributor (eg the ntfy app) from battery optimizations
2. exempting the EXA app from battery optimizations
3. giving the ntfy app "unlimited" access to mobile data even when the data saver is on.

The last issue seems to occur when Android sleeps, that the ntfy app has no permission to access the network without this setting (even when no data saver has been turned on).

4. Removing the ntfy subscription, and restart the app to create a new one and
5. if you are on an matrix.org account, do not use the default ntfy.sh server, as it gets severely rate limited (rate limits apply for all matrix.org users together....)

[AndrewFerr]

FWIW this issue hits me despite having removed all battery & network optimizations for both ntfy & Element X, and having recently (i.e. in the past month) re-registered Element X's subscription to ntfy.

That is to say, ntfy receives all push notifications (as opening the ntfy app and pulling down to refresh says that everything is up to date), but no Element X notification appears until a few seconds after I open Element X.

Viewing the Push History screen in Element X shows the push as having been received successfully, but the arrival time is shown as the time I opened the app, not at the actual (earlier) time the event that triggered the push was sent.

Interestingly, Element Classic is receiving notifications just fine for me, even without having disabling battery optimizations.

[jmartinesp]

@AndrewFerr I'd say in your case the problem is the ntfy app either can't wake the Element X app or it does wake it, but the Element X app does not get network connectivity permission from the OS - this is a bug we've started seeing recently on the latest Android OS versions and there's not much we can do, there is an open issue in Google's issue tracker about it.

Could you please upload a bug report, maybe containing a link to this issue? With that we might be able to understand what of the 2 cases above is happening to you.

Another option could be trying SunUp which we know contains some code to wake up the app.

Interestingly, Element Classic is receiving notifications just fine for me, even without having disabling battery optimizations.

I can't be sure, but I'd bet that's because the version you're using probably has a lower target SDK version and so Android is more permissive about background limits.

[drrossum]

Push Notifications started working again for me in version 2025.9.2. They had been broken since 2025.6.0.

Not sure if everyone's issues have been fixed, but I thank the devs for the attention!