Don't show push notifications for alerts that have already been viewed

Kirby

Well-known member
Push notifications are great, but they can also be pretty annoying in some cases.

One thing that really annoys me is getting push notifications for alerts I've already viewed.

This can happen in multiple scenarios:
  1. I have an active browser session where I've already viewed the alert before the browser receives the push notification. Due to queued (and thus async) push notifications in XF 2.3 this might happen even more frequently in the future.
  2. A device that was offline for a few hours gets online again and receives / displays all push notifications that were generated since it has gone offline, no matter if the alerts that triggered the push notifications have already been viewed in the meantime.
  3. A device that is online 24/7 receives and displays all notifications, no matter if the alerts that triggered them have already been viewed (maybe even on the same device).
Getting push notifications for alerts I've already viewed seems a useless waste of time.

I therefore suggest to automatically dismiss / hide push notifications that have already been viewed.
 
Upvote 7
Some of these are why I don't use push notifications anymore. I find them a nuisance more than a help much of the time. When I do use them, I only activate them on one device, usually my phone. So this seems useful.
 
The core thing to make push notifications actually useful, is to queue them for a little while and only send them if the user is offline and not looking at the site/thread/content.

Discord/Slack for example don't send you push notifications if the app is focused on the channel generating alerts even if there are unread items. They wait until the app looses focus and a short timeout before triggering push notifications
 
mastodon has a feature where it does not send email notifications if user is actively interacting with the instance. it is quite nice to have. on xenforo, i have to keep email notifications disabled because they become redundant. by time time i get to the email, i have already seen it on the forum and responded to it and conversation has continued and more and more mails are waiting in my inbox. they are nice for watched forums though.
 
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