Bug 429323

Summary:	very old "phantom" notifications are periodically re-sent even though they've been cleared
Product:	[Applications] kdeconnect	Reporter:	Adam Fontenot <adam.m.fontenot+kde>
Component:	android-application	Assignee:	Albert Vaca Cintora <albertvaka>
Status:	RESOLVED DOWNSTREAM
Severity:	normal	CC:	richard.llom
Priority:	NOR
Version:	unspecified
Target Milestone:	---
Platform:	Android
OS:	Android 9.x
See Also:	https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=411753
Latest Commit:		Version Fixed In:
Sentry Crash Report:

Description Adam Fontenot 2020-11-18 19:30:40 UTC

SUMMARY

Many times per day, I'll receive a dozen or more notifications on the Desktop received from my Android phone with KDE Connect. Most of these notifications originally appeared months or even years before, and obviously, no longer appear on Android.

STEPS TO REPRODUCE
n/a

OBSERVED RESULT

I see many old notifications. One for example is for a file I downloaded. I still have that file on the phone, and it was last modified in August 2019. So it's likely that this notification is over a year old!

EXPECTED RESULT

I should *never* be sent a notification if that notification does not exist / has already been cleared on Android.

SOFTWARE/OS VERSIONS
Linux: Arch Linux x86_64 kernel 5.9.8
KDE Plasma Version: 5.20.3
KDE Frameworks Version: 5.76.0
Qt Version: 5.15.1

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

I found this relevant post on Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/kde/comments/j1ogij/anyone_else_get_randomly_spammed_by_old/ which received quite a few upvotes and users commenting that they also see this issue.

The user who posted it said that it's this issue https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=411753 but I believe that's wrong. I *also* see that issue, but that seems to just be referring to receiving many *unread* notifications all at once. They're only "old" in virtue of the fact that the user hasn't bothered to clear them yet and they get resent when the device wakes up. I'm referring to something different: notifications that have already been cleared still reappear periodically.

It might be related to this bug: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=413015 but the user there only specified a problem with yandex-browser. I see this with many different applications.

Attempted fixes: I have tried completely removing and reinstalling KDE Connect, I've cleared the data storage on Android for the apps that I'm seeing the phantom notifications from, etc. Nothing has helped. These old notifications are stuck somewhere in the ether and nothing I've been able to do has gotten rid of them.

This could be a device specific issue: this is a Google Play edition Moto X4, on stock Android 9. (That said, a *lot* of different users reported seeing this issue in the Reddit thread.) If it *is* a device specific or Android issue, I think a reasonable enough workaround would be for the KDE connect app to check whether a notification actually exists (i.e. is currently being shown in the notification drawer) before sending it to the desktop component.

Side note: is this application maintained? I see a ton of bug reports on this tracker that haven't been triaged, and the automatic assignee, Albert Vaca, does not seem to have been active on this site for about a year, as far as I can tell. Additionally, the version box is missing anything after 1.10. I am using KDE Connect 1.15.1.

Comment 1 Adam Fontenot 2021-01-22 04:16:44 UTC

Just wanted to note that I did eventually figure out what was going on in more detail. I downloaded an app that records your notifications, so you can go back and look at old notifications even after they're swiped away. It turns out that this app also showed phantom notifications: a *system* app called either "Downloads" or "Download Manager" (I have both, don't remember which one it was) was spamming me with notifications every few minutes.

The weird thing is that they were visible to both this app and KDE Connect, but they never showed up in the notification tray on Android. (And they weren't silenced / hidden somehow either - I saw them normally whenever I downloaded something in Firefox for Android.)

So I was able to make this problem go away by completely clearing the storage for this system application. It hasn't come back yet as far as I can tell.

This still might be considered a bug, especially if the issue is widespread. I don't think it makes a lot of sense to send duplicate / repeated notifications that don't show up in the taskbar.

The other / related issue (https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=411753) is still a problem for me.

Comment 2 Richard Llom 2021-04-12 09:03:46 UTC

I'm closing this, as you have figured it out and this seems a very app specific problem. The other notifications bugs are triaged in their respective tickets.