MenubarCountdown

MenubarCountdown copied to clipboard

Enabling notifications for Menubar Countdown on Big Sur can be confusing. See https://twitter.com/jleedev/status/1375080727021293568

Not much we can do to change Apple's permissions requirements and UI, but maybe there is a better way to help the user through initial setup.

Copying images here:

This does not look like it, but it is in fact asking the user for permission:

The user must hover over the banner, then choose Options > Allow:

If the user doesn't do this, they must open system preferences and dig through the list of apps in notifications to turn them on.

Knowing nothing about the API or how other apps do this, I have two ideas:

1. When enabling notifications, try to educate the user about what's going to happen.
2. If notifications are denied (and it's possible to interrogate the system about this), offer to open the notifications preference pane.

Yeah, Apple's API is pretty awful. There may be a way I can customize the text displayed in the permissions request dialog, but there is no way to avoid it entirely or replace it with something in the app.

I think I could check the state of permissions and do something appropriate if the user tries to Start with request for notification but notifications are disabled.

There is apparently no way to change the text, and workarounds like popping up your own alert first telling the user what to do can get your app rejected: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/41353736/is-it-possible-to-have-a-custom-dialog-message-when-asking-for-notification-perm (that question is about iOS, but macOS is substantially the same).

So, maybe I need to change the Menubar Countdown "Start" dialog so that it will show the current permission status, and provide a button that opens System Preferences to help the user find the settings?