Why aren't notifications reaching a device?
There are several reasons that can cause notifications to not display on a device:
Notifications can be blocked by the user at the operating system level: Operating systems give the user the option to block notification from a particular application. It is worth saying that with this implementation we cannot know said temporary deactivation. Also, some battery saver apps force stopping running apps, which then will not be able to send notifications to the user's device.
Device-specific issues: Some devices are known to not receive notifications when apps are not running in the foreground or background. The manufacturers come with fixes in the new updates, but for older versions, the problem remains.
For Mi series and Lenovo 6000, we have found the failure rate to be around 98%/99%, that is, we can only deliver to 1 out of 100 devices.
User not connected to the Internet: Some clients are not connected to the Internet for a long time and therefore notifications cannot be sent to them and we also cannot mark them as inactive. Google suggested that in general almost 15% of users are offline and therefore may not receive notifications at the right time. This creates two problems:
• The delay in messages.
• Non-delivery in case the user is still outside the network.
Mark Down Token Gap: There is a gap between the time the device is idle and the time it is marked down. An excerpt from Google's documentation is: “please note that it may take a while for the registration token to be completely removed from our servers. Therefore, sent messages may get a valid message ID in response, even though the message will not be delivered to the client."
Other drawbacks: Many times in corporate setups, incoming packets are rejected by the external firewall due to security provision. The suggested solution is to block certain ports, but we're not sure if that's the right solution or if
that is the problem, since we cannot establish such causality ourselves.
Notifications can be blocked by the user at the operating system level: Operating systems give the user the option to block notification from a particular application. It is worth saying that with this implementation we cannot know said temporary deactivation. Also, some battery saver apps force stopping running apps, which then will not be able to send notifications to the user's device.
Device-specific issues: Some devices are known to not receive notifications when apps are not running in the foreground or background. The manufacturers come with fixes in the new updates, but for older versions, the problem remains.
For Mi series and Lenovo 6000, we have found the failure rate to be around 98%/99%, that is, we can only deliver to 1 out of 100 devices.
User not connected to the Internet: Some clients are not connected to the Internet for a long time and therefore notifications cannot be sent to them and we also cannot mark them as inactive. Google suggested that in general almost 15% of users are offline and therefore may not receive notifications at the right time. This creates two problems:
• The delay in messages.
• Non-delivery in case the user is still outside the network.
Mark Down Token Gap: There is a gap between the time the device is idle and the time it is marked down. An excerpt from Google's documentation is: “please note that it may take a while for the registration token to be completely removed from our servers. Therefore, sent messages may get a valid message ID in response, even though the message will not be delivered to the client."
Other drawbacks: Many times in corporate setups, incoming packets are rejected by the external firewall due to security provision. The suggested solution is to block certain ports, but we're not sure if that's the right solution or if
that is the problem, since we cannot establish such causality ourselves.
Updated on: 08/09/2023
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