Basically, what the title says. Do you use any app, that is proprietary, but either has no OSS alternatives or they’re all not good enough? If there is an alternative, what keeps you from switching?

  • GolfNovemberUniform
    6·
    12 days ago

    There already was a post like this this year but now my answer is “a standardized push notification system (most likely federated) that’s actually possible to be implemented in a user friendly way”. Google doesn’t want to encrypt theirs afaik and apparently some people are concerned about the traditional “every app is responsible for its own notifications” approach consuming much more battery, even though I didn’t notice it myself (I guess it’s possible if you have 50+ apps installed but it’s not something that should be a thing in the first place).

        • GolfNovemberUniform
          2·
          12 days ago

          I know about that but afaik almost nobody uses it. The only app I know that supports it is Mercurygram which is a Telegram client.

          • tetris11
            2·
            12 days ago

            How does Element and Signal implement push notifications?

            • GolfNovemberUniform
              1·
              12 days ago

              Idk about Element but Signal uses the Google’s insecure implementation if the device has gapps installed and it uses the traditional system which is not push if gapps are not installed.

              • JustMarkovOPEnglish
                3·
                12 days ago

                Molly (a hardened Signal mobile client fork) has a UnifiedPush version.

                • ReversalHatchery@beehaw.orgEnglish
                  2·
                  11 days ago

                  I was just thinking, how does one stop signal from sending the notifications to google, when moving to Molly with UP? is that automatic somehow?

                  • GolfNovemberUniform
                    2·
                    11 days ago

                    Molly FOSS and Molly with UP replace the Google’s notification system with websocket and UnifiedPush respectively for its own notifications. Google (hopefully) doesn’t have access to all notifications you get on your phone but only to those sent to apps that utilize their push implementation which Molly doesn’t use.

              • tetris11
                2·
                12 days ago

                Ah okay, thanks for the insight. I don’t have Gapps (MicroG or otherwise), so I do wonder how these services deliver their notifications.

                • huginn@feddit.it
                  3·
                  12 days ago

                  If it’s not using GCM then it must be long polling, unless signal servers are set up to use a 3rd form of push (APNS for iOS, GCM for Android)