Messages sometimes show up late and/or in bunches #8692
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Looking at your log, I'll assume your referring to right around here: 2019-03-18 09:05:07.118 MDT I FcmService: FCM message... Original Priority: 1, Actual Priority: 1Which is point where we get a ton of FCM messages. Unfortunately, Android isn't super kind with GCM/FCM message delivery these days (read: Android 8 and above). We send high-priority notifications, but the system itself may still batch them together, particularly if your phone is sitting still on your desk disconnected from a charger. It's a battery optimization that's particularly harmful to messengers. You can check to see if disabling battery optimizations in your system settings helps, but this particular behavior tends to pop up from time to time even if battery optimizations are off. We're looking into some possible workarounds. |
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All battery optimizations for signal are shut off and it was off the charger. It's set as my default SMS client, so battery opts are not allowed to be turned on by me. I suppose going on under the hood. |
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Signal Android 9, I can reproduce this bug. Let me know if there are any additional diagnostic steps I can take to help with this bug. Maybe the app could detect when a bunch of notifications are coming in (X # of notifications for messages older than Y minutes) and delay notifications for a bit. |
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@Noah-Huppert this bug is more to do with the fact that in, say a window of time where messaging via desktop is occurring, FCM doesn't let the phone know until late in that window...sometimes many minutes later. I'm not as worried about rapid-fire notifications. I don't know squat about FCM, so if you know about that, you'd probably be able to help. |
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Although I am annoyed by my desktop and phone not being in sync, I feel like the only thing Signal can do is manage the groups of notifications. I'm not sure how much control we could have of cloud messaging. |
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I'm seeing a similar behavior: the desktop client and phone sync outgoing messages very quickly, showing two white circles, and the recipient does not get messages for up to 40 mins. Same with incoming messages. |
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I don't use the desktop app, but both my wife and I frequently experience delayed notification / message delivery on our Moto G5s phones (Android 8.1.0, security patch level 1 April 2019) running on Sprint (via reseller Ting). Message notifications are sometimes very prompt, sometimes quite delayed (30 min in some cases). Things seem fine while in an exchange, but it's common to unlock the phone and only then get notification of a message(s) (I just had that happen with a 15-min old message). Battery optimization is off (at least on my phone, I think both). I have all requested Signal permissions enabled except Calendar and Location. |
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Just had another instance, where a message from another Signal user took 12 minutes to show up on my phone. This is very frustrating behavior. I really like this app, prefer to have the security it provides, and was very impressed with the quality of a 2-party video call when I used that. But the lack of timely delivery is a real negative that's causing me to re-think continuing to use the app. App version: 4.43.8, installed from Google Play store, routinely updated Android version: Android 8.1.0, security patch level 1 April 2019, no custom ROMs, not rooted Device model: Moto G5S Plus phone |
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I received a message from *75 at 9:04:27 PM GMT+02:00 that was sent at 5:55:08 PM GMT+02:00. Here is the debug log. |
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Hey all, I too am encountering this issue. Have conversation on desktop. Phone catches up later. I don't actually mind much. What I do mind is how my phone will chime for every single delayed message. So, like, an hour after my conversation, my phone will start chiming constantly for a solid two minutes or so. It's irritating, and unstoppable. Each message appears on lock-screen notification for about half a second. Can't there be a some way to at least have Signal not chime a bunch when delayed messages come in? |
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It's been quite a while since a noticed this behaviour and I think the deliver reliability has improved a lot however this morning a message took nearly 3 hours to be delivered. On the receiving device the message details show: |
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Today a strange thing happened. Contact had sent message1 at say 00:00 but it wasn't delivered to me. I sent him message2 at 00:45 and got one tick. I didn't receive message1. Contact sent more messages at 01:00 and 03:00 and I did not receive those messages either. Fed up, contact notified me through another channel. I force-quit Signal and re-opened it and immediately got the messages sent by the contact and the read receipt for the one I had sent. I have always had the problem of not receiving messages on time. So the messages sent at 01:00 and 03:00 not getting delivered is not surprising. But why didn't I get message1 even after I sent message2? |
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This is a new problem on my Signal. There used to be no delay in receiving notification on my phone of new Signal message arriving. Now there is, and often no notification until I open the app. Then it goes off as each notification alert sounds sequentially. This is new behaviour so may be bug in newer version. To my knowledge nothing else has changed. |
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First mention I can find "No Push notifications on data #8400" |
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@IanSpam Please post a debuglog that was taken after you opened the app and discovered that messages were delivered late. There's a couple things that could happen that would result in delayed messages, and I can see what you're hitting. |
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@bme13 I saw this snippet in your log: 2020-01-08 12:21:02.995 CET I FcmService: FCM message... Delay: 10022865Followed by a cluster of other delayed messages. That delay translates to ~2.75hrs. Lines up with what you said. That means that Signal sent an FCM message to that device almost 3 hours before, but for whatever reason, the device chose not to deliver it to our app for 3 hours. The fact that the receiver's device was in a low battery state sounds like the likely explanation. And unfortunately device manufacturers aren't neutral deliverers of notifications. They keep their own whitelist of apps they think are important, and it's likely that WhatsApp is on that list, hence why it didn't experience any delay. |
My friends also had this issue on One UI, but I have, at times, experienced the delay myself (Pixel 4). Luckily making Signal 'not optimized' seemed to fix their issues. |
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Debug Logs This was earlier this week, at the time it was working fine for one contact but didn't go through when I sent a message to someone else: https://debuglogs.org/b359c0eb4169e971ba0f7c071b6123d5c674104b90ed1dd083ed4a60724c0ae6 This was just now, I had been talking to someone most of the day with no issues and then it just stopped delivering: https://debuglogs.org/ca9b6ce8d5980dbcdeadbf780419e986446dedf7a4438b3fc67b186d3ab07592 @greyson-signal I've had this issue for over a year. Normally it would just happen 1-2 times a month (negligible), but during some weeks (like now) it's almost unusable...when I message someone it's a coin toss of whether it goes through or not. And then it's another coin toss of whether it's going to be 30 mins or 10 hours later when it finally gets delivered. I don't think it's fair to attribute it to the handling of the msg by the specific device or things like battery optimization settings as I've experienced it across many different device on all platforms. I've gotten new phones, friends have gotten new phones (including switching from Android to iOS, etc) and the issue still persists, meanwhile it has not happened one single time with any other messenger (to me) literally ever in the last decade. If it was specific to the device then it would also not persist when multiple devices are actively connected (i.e., phone and desktop client), but it does. This is a Signal issue. I love the app and have been an advocate since day one, it's by far my preferred messenger. I'm always trying to get friends to switch. And normally it works great, and I can live with infrequent "one-offs"...but there are periods when 'unreliable' is a huge understatement. This past week I've been using alternate messengers or calling multiple people telling them to open Signal so that messages can come through multiple times a day. Please let me know if there is anything I can do to help diagnose this issue, I don't want to give up on Signal :( Thanks for your help on this but also generally, I really appreciate you and everyone else that works on this app 🙏🙏🙏 |
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Encountered the issue today. I was using signal desktop for about an hour and when I went back to my phone all the notifications finally rushed in. https://debuglogs.org/057079a28e187cd35b9022624b1200b5c9e9ce4b36e8e2d0c4bf915f5da7c6ac |
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I just turned off battery optimizations, we'll see if this fixes the issue.
…On Tue, Feb 4, 2020 at 3:04 PM Taylor Riley ***@***.***> wrote:
Encountered the issue today. I was using signal desktop for about an hour
and when I went back to my phone all the notifications finally rushed in.
https://debuglogs.org/057079a28e187cd35b9022624b1200b5c9e9ce4b36e8e2d0c4bf915f5da7c6ac
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We had a longstanding problem with a Moto G3 where Signal messages will not be received after a restart and before the first unlock/login. The G3 ran a rather old version of Android, so we lived with it. We have now upgraded to the Google Pixel 3a running Android 10 and we have exactly the same problem. My wife likes to turn her phone off at night. If she forgets to unlock her phone after power up in the morning, it can be hours of delay in receiving messages that came in during the night from another time zone. I have missed multiple incoming Signal voice calls because I restarted the phone and forgot to unlock it so Signal would start functioning. I'm assuming the Signal app does NOT start up in the background until first unlock. Why? I wonder how many people experiencing delayed notifications just haven't noticed this correlation. BTW, the same problem exists with K-9 Mail. I imagine this could be linked to Google's anti-background app "features", but I didn't think the old G3 would have been plagued with those. |
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I'm on CalyxOS with microG - I was having similar isues, @pflanzenandi, but the last two versions have stabilized things. Using the global installer seems to work better for me, since I think microG causes Signal to think it should be using the Google services. |
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As an Android dev with first-hand experience regarding battery optimization workarounds I'd like to second the suggestion of providing fallbacks as options (in settings), like the websocket approach; there are countless devices, and they may change battery optimization behaviors at any time, so without pervasive whitelisting I'd consider it impossible to maintain responsive notification behavior everywhere at all times, especially without a large support staff and a huge device testing farm. With fallback options at least the more tinkering-minded users (of which there likely are many in the case of Signal) can find a way to keep their app running smoothly again. There likely are other fallback options that could improve reliability, e.g. running a foreground service (just for the tinkerers, to be enabled via settings). I don't know what it takes to be whitelisted by the big device manufacturers, but I'd imagine that many would be open to doing this at no cost for a popular open-source messaging app like Signal, for reasons of benevolent PR. Also, consider contributing Signal's use cases to the new CTS-D suite, which will benefit everyone: The devs here may already be aware of the more humongous battery optimization threads on Google's issue tracker. |
Hear hear to above post. |
Yeah... how about we just keep this discussion about the program's bug and not unfounded theories. |
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Omg @LeftHandRev NSA agent exposed ? More seriously, I think I was able to grasp a log of a failing message. I tried to isolate the relevant information, hope I didn't forget anything.
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Aaaaaaand, delays are back as of the latest update yesterday, 5.44.5. Had no problems with 5.44.4. Edit: Confirmed with friends as well. |
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5.44.5 was a hotfix to address a very-unrelated issue (see commits here). I believe you're having notification problems, but I do not believe it was related to the release. |
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Indeed, this has nothing to do with 5.44.5, as I experienced it over the weekend myself while on 5.44.4. Situation: suddenly I got a notification with messages from multiple senders, sent hours earlier. They were delayed by around 5h or so. The log is riddled with There's too much in this log for me to go through especially as I don't know what exactly to look for, but this log might hold some relevant information? I hope it helps. Edit: formatting. |
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Have had some issues similar to this over the last few months. Not regularly but this is the 3rd or 4th time it has happened now. Sent a message on desktop last night and it wasn't delivered until 11+ hours later. It was sent via desktop to an iPhone. The iPhone was most likely in low power mode at the time, but the user can't specifically recall. Desktop that it was sent from: iPhone that it was sent to: I'm not 100% certain what I'm looking at in the logs but it appears that the received log on the iPhone was this one: |
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I have the issue as well. For example, a contact sent a message today (2022/09/09) at 11:18, I only got notified when I opened the application at 11:52. I don't really understand why the network is failing sometimes (should I rather say often ?) (look at all the "java.io.IOException: Connection closed!" exceptions, the EPIPE errors and the FCM WS onFailure callbacks). I'm rarely using my phone during the day. |
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I've had the same issues described here with messages arriving hours after they were sent to me. Often times they don't arrive until I or the sender sends another message in the thread. I have a OnePlus Nord n200 5g and Signals my default message app. Battery optimization is off for Signal. All the other settings I've adjusted based on advice online about issues like this. The delay seems to happen most frequently with voice texts. Here's my debug log hopefully it'll help there are several delays from the past two weeks. One message didn't arrive for two days until the sender sent another text. https://debuglogs.org/android/5.51.7/a4d797779ee6a9acbe95e93662ad1d980fbb4e998e97972273ba721f117f939e |
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Interesting, I'm also on a OnePlus Nord (CE 5g) and had this issue for the first time today. Though this was on the previous version and I did an update afterwards, so I don't know if the issue will persist. The messages in question have time stamps of e.g. sent at 18:50, received at 19:30, but there is nothing in the logs around this time. |
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I also have the same problem with messages not getting pushed, when my phone is blank and dozing (around the 5 min mark). Turning the phone on sets off the message notification push. This is going on for several weeks now. Signal was pushing perfectly fine at some point. What happened? If I can help you debugging please let me know. If you need logs, also please let me know. Lineage 12 |
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Now with the removal of SMS (the only way I as the sender can force the recipient's device to wake TF up and receive a message) that does it for my support of Signal. This has been an issue for years with ZERO admission from the devs that there is even a problem, and not even an attempt to add a workaround (allowing manual selection of WebSockets), and with removal of SMS meaning I and my friends and family now need to use TWO apps to contact different people mean Signal is dead. Let's just turn this thread into a "Signal alternatives" discussion instead at this point. |
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@ColonelPanic-42 Since you seem to already know a solution, why don't you open a pull request with an attempted fix? Everyone can contribute. |
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@jmbuhr You must have missed the part in my message where I said Signal is dead to me now that they're removing SMS support. Why would I bother to waste my time pulling down the code, fiddle around with it to make sense of what's doing what and where, to add a little toggle in a Settings menu that forces the use of WebSockets, when I won't be using the app anymore? Simply put, it's not my problem anymore, I'm just frustrated at how obviously tone deaf the devs of this project are to their user base. |
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@greyson-signal can you give more insights about Android 'batching' notifications ? I have seen it happens in an APP unrelated to signal. A single high priority message is sucessfully pushed from FCM and it is on the device, but it can take up to few good seconds to minutes to trigger a notification which i don't get it since the message is already there. |
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@Roaltexd While high-priority FCM messages are supposed to be delivered ASAP, OEM's can choose to do whatever they want with them. Many OEM's have lists of apps they prioritize, and if you're not on that list, they may batch notifications together in order to optimize for battery life. In addition, in Signal's case, we can't put the actual message content in the FCM payload -- we have to fetch the message from the network. Sometimes OEM's will restrict network access even though (per the docs) they're not supposed to in response to a high-priority FCM message. So lots of reasons, most of which are specific to a given OEM. |
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@greyson-signal Seems related but might require another bug report. I have Signal on my Windows desktop as well as on Android. Once, messaging through a desktop application, Signal takes a lot of time to sync that conversation, receiving one message at a time and only when Signal is visibly open, otherwise, nothing is received. I don't care about the notifications, I would like just the syncing would happen normally and wouldn't impede 2the ability to communicate with others, now it might take tens of minutes to update messaging history one message at a time. Also, during the "syncing" one cannot receive or send calls or send messages as they got lost, so basically, the signal is non-functioning for that user. However, today for some reason the messages stop syncing at all with the messages that were sent yesterday on my laptop. Here is the debug report: https://debuglogs.org/android/6.6.3/2f102519ad47945c19d28aabb952368e233cf69a6cf6e6fa3d8082244472cece |
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Since the last update, I'm getting delays once again. Last time it affected me was 7-AUG-2022. |
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Tedff
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I just started running into this issue a few days ago after having no problems for years. As part of my attempted solutions, I deleted the app and reinstalled it (and re-imported messages), so I do not have a debug log for that initial issue. I experienced it again today, however, so here is that log: https://debuglogs.org/android/6.15.3/060eadbbdae910a95b2cd39920209ae93567408b38f295bd75a6164c46b9d36c Based on research a few minutes ago, I disabled both battery and data optimizations for Signal. Fingers crossed that does the trick. Stock Goggle Pixel 3a XL. |
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It's been happening a lot for the past days, for no specific reason. Battery optimization was re-enabled. I disabled it, didn't help. Will try to post logs asap |
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Just happened now. Tell me if more logs are required/what to look for.
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Hi @greyson-signal I see you done an extensive research about this issues. |
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I also experience this delay frequently. I often receive messages with a delay, even though I'm surfing the Internet or using apps on my cell phone at the time. I have already disabled battery optimization. My Pixel 8 is running GrapheneOS. |
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@greyson-signal, Maybe a workaround would be to send an empty notification after a timeout if the phone has not fetched the message from the Signal server to get a higher FCM priority? |
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My friend is encountering this issue on their phone. Pixel 8 on Signal 7.16.4. Sometimes they never get any messages until they open the app. Other times it works fine. |
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I am also seeing intermittent message or notification delays. sometimes when i am also on desktop i can see that the message came through on desktop, but there is no notification on android for an extended period of time. i also noticed that a message i sent was not seen on the other end until the next day, and the message i receive i am not notified about for anything between minutes to hours+. i do see the new message if i open the app. the messages do show the original timestamp when it is viewed, not when i am notified about it or happen to see it in app. this applies for both messages i receive and send (it shows on the other end with original send time). i am on Android and the other end is on iOS so it may be a cross platform issue. Based on these observations, there are a number of possibilities that I can't tell between:
I am on Android 15 but also had this with Andraid 14, on Pixel 7. Signal 7.19.2 from play store. Setting not battery optimized and allowed to have background data. I see that there have been numerous past issues opened for similar problem, a non-exhaustive selection from a quick search: #970, #1102, #5323, #5670, #8214, #8604, #8934, #9259, #9533, #9793, #10693, #11079, #11731, #12867, #13249, #13630, #13695 |
and others
Bug description
Typing on the desktop client and after awhile I heard my phone buzz. Opened it up and a flood of signal messages come in that were from the last several minutes (15 minutes maybe)
Steps to reproduce
Actual result: signal messages from recent history flood in
Expected result: messages come into phone roughly at the same flow as desktop while on the same network
Device info
Device: Samsung galaxy s9
Android version: 9.0 stock Verizon
Signal version: 4.35.3
Link to debug log
https://debuglogs.org/6d156ab53db2297c534498e59937440ab48bb8d5ef77527afd850adcaa89c26f
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