Better handling of "could not synchronize"

[Jeidnx]

First of all, thank you all for developing and maintaining this app :)

I get multiple "could not synchronize" push notifications daily, probably because during school I have very poor Internet, and the app can't connect to my xmpp server during the 30s granted by Apple. Curiously though, almost all of the time i get these push notifications, I didn't actually receive any new messages (as confirmed by my laptop, which has proper internet). I understand that it is important to notify users of potentially missed messages, like mentioned in #864, but for some users muting these notifications entirely, may be a better solution.

In short:

• Why does the app try to synchronize, even though i didn't actually receive any messages
• Is anybody against the idea of adding a button to mute "could not synchronize" notifications

[tmolitor-stud-tu]

Why does the app try to synchronize, even though i didn't actually receive any messages

That's probably because Monal tries to do periodic syncs in the background every few hours to compensate for lost pushes.
Up until version 5.3.4 connection issues in these background syncs could trigger sync error notifications, too.
I fixed that a few days ago: c5158b3
Monal 5.3.4 will include this fix and is already in public beta testing, the release is pending apple's review (e.g. it will be out in ~2 days).

Could you test if those spurious sync errors persist with Monal 5.3.4?

If it persists: does your server use a csi module (for prosody these are mod_csi_simple or mod_csi_battery_saver) and support XEP-0198 (mod_smacks in prosody)?

[Jeidnx]

Thanks for the quick response, i took some time testing the new behavior.

After updating to version 5.3.4 the Error messages were way fewer. In case it still matters i am using prosody with mod_csi_battery_saver. There are still some of these notifications, though as far as i can tell only if i actually received a message.

One complaint i still have is that i periodically get complaints from people using my server and monal that "my server isn't working properly" because of these notifications. I would suggest changing the body of these notifications to something along the lines of "you may have missed messages", similar to how whatsapp used to handle this (maybe they still do, i wouldn't know). A button to disable these notifications is no longer something i would introduce because they are no longer seemingly random.

[tmolitor-stud-tu]

Glad to hear!

These sync notifications are not only displayed if messages could not be received, but also for outgoing messages that could not be sent (hence the word "sync"). Showing different messages for these two cases is not that trivial.

I'm not sure how to phrase that better, any suggestions welcome.

[tmolitor-stud-tu]

You'll probably like these two commits, too:
34cb0a4
2133adc