WebClients
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ProtonMail
Ditch google notifications
Hi,
It seems weird that PM still relies on GCM/FCM for notifications.
Even with PM APK downloaded from the website, and having whitelisted PM in DNSfilter (personalDNSfilter | F-Droid - Free and Open Source Android App Repository 3), I can’t receive PM notifications if I do not open the app, because I blocked GCM/FCM adresses (mtalk.google.com 5, alt1-mtalk.google.com,…) with DNSfilter.
While we trust PM for keeping the minimum metadata, how can we know what Google keeps if PM needs to transmit data to their servers for each notification/message?
Furthermore, curcumventing GCM/FCM has been solved by other android app team, like Tutanota (the blog post also cites Mastodon):
Is there a plan to drop GCM/FCM (which as Tutanota highlights “includes Google’s tracking code for analytics purposes”) for SSE (Server Sent Events API) or another alternative ?
Also requiring Google Play Services for actual notifications makes the app less usable on a degoogled Android rom.
https://github.com/ProtonMail/WebClients/issues/359#issue-2013279791
@o0nd7ots, I agree. https://ntfy.sh/ is what we should replace it with. It's the FOSS standard, at least on F-Droid. See https://protonmail.uservoice.com/forums/945460-general-ideas/suggestions/19635550-remove-dependance-on-google-play-services.
UnifiedPush works on de-googled devices and can even fallback to Google/FCM on other devices. And it seems the ntfy server mentioned above can also be self-hosted. For more info, see: https://unifiedpush.org/ https://f-droid.org/2022/12/18/unifiedpush.html
Another option is to look at how FairEmail does it. I don't think it uses UnifiedPush, but it works great on a phone with google services disabled. I think it just keeps running a foreground service?
