Repeated ongoing new mail notifications

[jonny_mk]

This never really bothered me until recently. I now got myself a pebble watch and now this behavior of AquaMail is driving me nuts. I have an IMAP IDLE account setup. Lets say I get 5 emails, I get the notifications and everything is good. Until I start reading my messages. After I open the first message, I get a notification saying: "4 new messages in aquamail". Then I open another one and yet another notification saying: "3 new messages in aquamail" and so forth.

I checked "Only when new messages" in "Message Notifications" setting, but that didn't make any difference. I also tried the latest development build 1.3.29. This seems to have more options to control when I should get a notification, but none of them seem to be doing anything to fix this particular problem.

Is there a solution for this issue? Thanks a bunch --Jonny

[Kostya Vasilyev]

I assume you get those notifications in Pebble, not my app?

First, Pebble's own app, as far as I understand, gets triggered by any notifications posted by Aqua --  including those ongoing "Synchronizing with <account>" ones, which do *not* represent a new message.

Second, I guess they are doing their own counting of those notifications, and *assume* that they can somehow figure the count of new messages from that. Well, Aqua can update an existing status bar notification in some cases, let's say there were 4 unread messages, and on next mail check there are two.

Third, Aqua can and will post per-account notifications. A third party app won't be able to connect them to accounts, or to know that they represent two unrelated message counts (which should be added together, if a single value is desired).

To summarize, even though many apps do it, monitoring another app's notifications and trying to make conclusions about what they represent is a road to nowhere. It's just plain wrong.

Some thoughts:

- You can turn off Aqua's "status bar icon" setting under "look and feel" to get rid of those "ongoing" notifications that I guess cause Pebble's app to become confused.

- There was recent interest from the developer of an unofficial Pebble app to integrate with Aqua. I'm very excited, hope it works out.

[jonny_mk]

Thanks for the reply Kostya.

I should have been clearer. Messages like  "3 new messages in aquamail" which appear after I open one of the, say, 4 new messages I have in my inbox are actually generated by AquaMail on my phone and appear in the status bar as actual notifications. They *only* appear as status bar updates without the accompanying vibration/sound or whatever of a new message. As I said, this never bothered me previously. But unfortunately, these are sent to pebble as notifications.

I am using pebble notifier app which has an option to turn off the ongoing notifications, which works quite well. I was hoping since the status bar updates are actually generated by Aquamail, if there was a way to suppress them at the source, i.e. in Aquamail.

thanks!

[Kostya Vasilyev]

AquaMail's notifications are not worded like that - "4 new messages in AquaMail".

They're worded "X new messages in <account name here>".

So I'm not quite sure those are Aqua's notifications.

If they are -- which are you running? If the 1.3.8 from Play, then:

- Please update to latest development build
- Change app settings -> message notifications -> "notify about" from the default "all unread messages" to "new unread messages".

[jonny_mk]

Sorry again. The exact message reads:

4 new messages in xxxx@xxxx.com: Inbox
3 new messages in xxxx@xxxx.com: Inbox

and so on.

I am using the development version: 1.3.29
I have "notify about" already set to "new unread messages"

I see that there is a newer development version 1.3.30. I will install it and see if it helps and update the thread.

[jonny_mk]

ok, I have updated to 1.3.30 and still have the same issue. One thing that suppresses these notifications is if I open my inbox in aquamail once.

So, to summarize:

I get a bunch of messages and I am not in the inbox view. Then I access and read the messages from another mail client on my computer. After I open every new message, I get a notification in the status bar counting down the number of "new" messages I have in my inbox. And these notifications are promptly sent to my pebble.

This indeed happens even with the phone screen off.

The only thing that suppresses these notifications is if I open my inbox view at least once. Once I  open the inbox and back out, then accessing the new messages from another device will not trigger the notifications.

I hope there is some useful information here for you to track down the problem. I will be happy to send you any debug logs.

thanks!

[g6agarwal]

Same here with me.. Like i have 6 unread messages in my mail.. Then aquamail notify me every after 5 to 6 minutes.

Sent from my GT-I9500 using Tapatalk

[jonny_mk]

They are from AquaMail alright. Here are the screenshots.

[Kostya Vasilyev]

Ok, you're using .30 and the notification setting is set to "notify about new". Good.

Now, let's say you get "4 new messages" -- and then "3 new messages" -- does this mean you've read and marked as read one message, elsewhere, web mail or a desktop mail app?

Aqua *has* to update its notification if you do that, since there were 4 new messages, and then there are 3, does this make sense?

[jonny_mk]

Kostya, Thanks for the explanation.

Kind of makes sense. Lets say I get 4 new messages. Then, lets say, I read one elsewhere (on web, desktop client etc.) Then, I would think, only messages I receive *after* I have read this one message are *new*. By this logic I have 3 *unread* messages remaining in my inbox and not 3 *new* messages.

This is how I was expecting "notify about new" setting to work.

Any chance of changing it to make it work this way?

=================
PS: This is indeed how my other email client (touchdown) behaves in terms of handling new notifications. Its just that Aquamail is so much nicer and I prefer using it. As I said before, it wouldn't bother me if it wasn't for the pebble receiving this (false) notification.

[Kostya Vasilyev]

@johnny -- Gmail updates the "new" notifications too.

When you think of it....

There is a per-account "waterline", which is a point in time. Any messages 1) unread 2) newer than the waterline end up in the notification.

If you mark any one of them read, they're still above the "waterline", and since there were 4 and now there are 3, the existing notification has to be updated... Just has to, since the 4 (and their text previews / senders) is now wrong.

The "waterline" gets cleared when you either 1) launch the app or 2) swipe off the notification. It doesn't matter what happens to messages below the "waterline" -- they won't be considered for notifications at all.

And to reiterate:

Snooping on another app's notifications and trying to "guesstimate" an unread count from them is wrong. Maybe close, maybe works in some case, but in the end, it's wrong.

I'd be happy to talk to the developer of your Pebble integration app, and explain how to get the accurate unread count from Aqua (same value as shows on the icon for Apex / Nova / Samsung / Sony / now LG).

[jonny_mk]

ok. thanks. The app is called Pebble notifier. I'll send a request to the developer as well.

[jonny_mk]

I have contacted the developers and let them know. Hopefully something will come out of this.

For now, I have turned off the pebble notifications for AquaMail. Looking forward to turning them back on soon.

thanks!

[Kostya Vasilyev]

So far, I've heard back from the developer of this one:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=uk.co.finebyte.pebbleglance

I've sent him the info, let's see what comes out of it.

[jonny_mk]

I have opened an issue with Pebble notifier here:

https://github.com/dattas/pebble-notifier/issues/45 [nofollow]

and the developer says:

======
There is no guesstimation. It simply reads the notification that their applications send out. They must be sending that notification out for it to show up on your pebble through pebble notifier.
======

Kostya,

Would you please be able to comment on the issue on github?

thanks!