signalapp
Messages sometimes show up late and/or in bunches
- [x ] I have searched open and closed issues for duplicates
- [x] I am submitting a bug report for existing functionality that does not work as intended
- [x] I have read https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Android/wiki/Submitting-useful-bug-reports
- [x ] This isn't a feature request or a discussion topic
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
- use desktop client, message friends on signal.
- sometimes hear phone buzz
- pick up phone and turn on screen
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
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: 1
Which 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.
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.
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.
@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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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?
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: send: 9:28:53 received: 12:20:56 Now I have to say the battery on the receiving device was a bit low < 10% however during the timespan the Signal message was not delivered multiple Whatsapp messages were received. Both Whatsapp and Signal are excluded from battery optimization on the receiving phone. Log sending device: https://debuglogs.org/5af3fb0ada60fcc7b199a7cff2800ac9343be5e67ea65b43f03b6d13978eb376 Log receiving device: https://debuglogs.org/3805b112765ae5838a2012bc0cf2d58d27d02bfd02579a47963139039bf9e123
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?
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. Family members used to mention this to me on their devices but I thought it was probably a notification setting. I have checked every setting I can think of. All seem correct, still no timely notifications. Phone: HTC Desire 530 Android: 6.0.1 Signal: 4.53.7
First mention I can find "No Push notifications on data #8400" opened this issue on Nov 27, 2018
@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.
@bme13 I saw this snippet in your log:
2020-01-08 12:21:02.995 CET I FcmService: FCM message... Delay: 10022865
Followed 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.
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.
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. I know you mentioned that all your optimizations are off though.
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 🙏🙏🙏
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
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 [email protected] 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
— You are receiving this because you were mentioned. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Android/issues/8692?email_source=notifications&email_token=AAZLM4ATKGP77KSOL2NSJOLRBHC4JA5CNFSM4G7IHWQKYY3PNVWWK3TUL52HS4DFVREXG43VMVBW63LNMVXHJKTDN5WW2ZLOORPWSZGOEKY75FY#issuecomment-582090391, or unsubscribe https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AAZLM4BZM6B6ZQU6KTMX5HDRBHC4JANCNFSM4G7IHWQA .
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.
@alcoolfire The problem you're experiencing is true of every app. Your phone doesn't do anything until your first unlock.
@greyson-signal: Thank you. This should be clearly noted whenever someone reports problems of delayed notifications, as it may explain some of them. I take it there's no workaround. Has that always been true going back to older versions of Android? I had never noticed that as a problem on Nexus 4 and 5 devices.
I occasionally restart my phone and walk way rather than wait for its lengthy boot time. I'd better break that habit. I guess that makes automated restarts a rather bad idea too.
Since this is the closest issue that I can relate to my problem, I'm mentioning it in here. Singal-Android does not receive messages(sent from another Android client) after registration until force restarting the app.
Since this is the closest issue that I can relate to my problem, I'm mentioning it in here. Singal-Android does not receive messages(sent from another Android client) after registration until force restarting the app.
You should include a log from the app here right after that happens
I have this same Problem with some of my contacts. When I send them a message, it shows one checkmark, so it's delivered to the server. But only after about 5 minutes they receive the message (2 checkmarks). That happens several times a day. But most of the time it works normally. It is still annoying, when you are in a conversation and it happens. It cuts the conversation off, because the other person thinks you didn't send anything as reply. I alrady made sure they had all battery optimisations disabled (with the guide), but it still happens.
It is rare, that I am the person, who gets the messages late, but today it happened again and I captured a debug log after I noticed it: https://debuglogs.org/559cea01cc8a0dc81b2e6bdd137bcbc7fd227ab48742a53d816834654fe39795 After about 2020-06-15 14:16:19.680 MESZ I get several delayed messages (I hope that is the right row, I am bad at reading debug logs). My Phone is a Asus Zenfone 6 and I also have every battery optimisation disabled (the one by Android and the one by Asus).
I hope this issue will be resolved sometimes in the future, because conversations sometimes don't feel as "fluid" as on other messengers.
Edit: Also the debug log has other exceptions, I don't know if they are relevant
2020-06-15 14:16:19.680 MESZ I FcmReceiveService: FCM message... Delay: 726449
I'm guessing that's your problem, which is that it took ~12 minutes after the server sent a push notification for your phone to tell Signal about it. This is a very tricky space, because every phone manufacturer likes to put in different optimizations about push notifications. They could be doing weird stuff despite the fact that you turned off battery optimizations. They could be giving special treatment to specific messaging apps that they know are popular. It's impossible to say. But we are still doing research in this space to try to figure out what's happening.
Hi, adding more data to this issue.
I have a OnePlus 7T and I have battery saving for Signal disabled, and background data enabled. I'm getting delayed messages as well, even though the phone always has Wi-Fi or 4G available.
Day in question is 2020-08-30. I got a message at close to 2AM (around the 01:50 block of log lines, I think) that was originally sent at 00:16.
https://debuglogs.org/0302644cb55eab1ce5f50f8df62eef69487f3f1fdb83276784a900af436b00b0
Hello, also adding more data.
I have a Samsung Galaxy A5 2017 with battery saving disabled in general and for Signal specifically. The Signal version is 4.70.5.
The date is 2020-09-05/06, the message has been sent at 14:45:16 into a group chat of four people and received at 00:00:14, right after an alarm set for 00:00 went off. The phone was connected to WiFi for the entire duration and I even sent a message for which I received the reading status in real time.
Link to the log: https://debuglogs.org/ec3e2bea1a6a1c8887f415dafbfad22e4a847ec48ca3d9d049b295ba7524684d
Messages not receiving, no notifications unless i open an app.Every optimization for stopping signal is off
https://debuglogs.org/3a8c207e641e7944cbe25603b4ed53582aaa099ce08a5c4a354e115be35ad1ee
