Desktop push notifications do not always function (twitter, reddit, etc)

[Brave-Matt]

Latest status: see #2362 (comment)

Description

I've seen DT notifications for various sites (gmail, community, twitter, reddit, etc) work without any issues or conflicts with settings. DT notifications for Youtube however do not work. Alert never actually get displayed in b-c (nor does it play the sound).

This was tested using Dev, Beta and Release builds. Windows 7/Windows 10.
Shields up/down and changing global shields have no effect.

Steps to Reproduce

1. Visit YouTube, sign into YT account
2. Verify that:

• Notifications from YT are set to "Allowed", either by prompt on visit or manual entry (see Match content setting rules to allow subdomain and port specifications #1775 ) in browser
• Desktop notifications set to "on" in YT (Click the notification icon (bell) --> Gear icon --> Notification Settings --> Desktop Notifications). Note that it will display the Chrome icon instead of the Brave icon.
• Notifications are enabled in Windows system settings

3. Try and provoke a notification from you YT account. I tested this by sending both messages, and commenting on a video I put on my channel from a separate account.
4. Adjust Shields settings (global and/or panel), and repeat

Actual result:

No notification is displayed on desktop. Notifications do appear on YT.

Expected result:

Desktop notification appears as intended, notifications appear on YT as well.

Reproduces how often:

Easily/always

Brave version (brave://version info)

Release: 0.56.15
Beta: 0.57.8
Dev: 0.58.10

Reproducible on current release:

Yes

• Does it reproduce on brave-browser dev/beta builds?
  Yes

Website problems only:

• Does the issue resolve itself when disabling Brave Shields?
  No
• Is the issue reproducible on the latest version of Chrome?
  No - notifications are displayed as intended. I was tricked by this more than once.

Additional Information

User(s) also reporting this on Community:
https://community.brave.com/t/version-0-56-7-chromium-70-0-3538-77-official-build-beta-64-bit-youtube-notifications-or-lack-of/36771/26

[Brave-Matt]

May be related to this:
https://www.reddit.com/r/brave_browser/comments/a5xy25/cant_enable_facebook_notifications_in_brave/

[Brave-Matt]

This seems to be true for Twitter as well -- Navigating to "Web notifiactions" in Twitter's settings displays the following message:

Note that I have seen the offer to enable web notifications on Twitter in previous releases.

[Brave-Matt]

Several +1's from Community:
https://community.brave.com/t/notification-enabled-but-not-working/49594/8

[Brave-Matt]

+1 from reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/brave_browser/comments/b90b4o/release_channel_version_06250_is_live/ek30sbv?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x

[Brave-Matt]

+1 Community:
https://community.brave.com/t/google-drive-desktop-notifications-are-broken-in-brave-for-windows/52498/7

[felschr]

I'm pretty sure the reason why it's not working is #2143
On Android it's still working atm because FCM wasn't disabled there.

I'm not entirely familiar with Chrome's history with FCM but I think they initially offered a custom FCM/GCM API (https://developers.chrome.com/extensions/gcm) and later added support for the Push API once it was standardised.
Maybe they've reused parts of the FCM implementation for the Push API. So #2143 probably removed too much.
I'm not even sure if there is still such a thing as an FCM API in Chrome or if they maybe just used that as an internal name for their Push API implementation. At least chrome.gcm is not available anymore.

Hopefully this contains some new insight.

[mrdavey]

I'm having the same issue and suspect that @felschr is correct that it is FCM related.
I'm testing web push notifications using Firebase FCM and it works perfectly on Chrome, Opera, and Firefox, but not Brave. (No Safari as it doesn't support Push API)

According to FCM documentation:

The FCM JavaScript API lets you receive notification messages in web apps running in browsers that support the Push API. This includes the browser versions listed in this support matrix.

It seems Brave's Push API is broken.

[Brave-Matt]

More +1s:
https://community.brave.com/t/notification-enabled-but-not-working/49594/41

[bbondy]

@simonhong could you take a look?

[simonhong]

On my local, I debugged with gmail and youtube service on MacOS.
With youtube, renderer process requests notification displaying via NotificationManager::DisplayPersistentNotification().
With gmail, NotificationManager::DisplayNonPersistentNotification() was used.
On Brave, I only can get gmail notification.
On Chromium, both notifications are displayed.
And according to notification spec and comments, persistent notification is a notification with an associated service worker registration.

I think persistent notification seem not working properly on Brave.
But not sure it is youtube specific problem or not. Needs more debugging.

Push notification doesn't work with Brave. - https://serviceworke.rs/push-simple_demo.html

[simonhong]

After re-enabling GCM client (we disabled by #1716), I got notification from youtube and demo of https://serviceworke.rs/push-simple_demo.html works well.

However, still web notification of twitter can't be enabled. (Same as chromium)

[Brave-Matt]

+1 https://community.brave.com/t/notification-enabled-but-not-working/49594/53?u=mattches

Note that 9 new users have joined the above thread confirming that they're unable to receive notifications.

[WorldLanguages]

After re-enabling GCM client (we disabled by #1716), I got notification from youtube and demo of https://serviceworke.rs/push-simple_demo.html works well.

However, still web notification of twitter can't be enabled. (Same as chromium)

@simonhong This isn't working in latest Brave Stable, even with shields off: https://serviceworke.rs/push-simple_demo.html

[snowbound]

I went back to using Firefox rather than continue to use Chrome and put up with Google antics. On the Chromium side both Brave and MS Edge Chromium beta and dev have the notification issues

[simonhong]

@WorldLanguages This issue is blocked by #4431

[snowbound]

This was working for a couple of months for me once I enabled it. However with Version 1.3.115 Chromium: 80.0.3987.87 (Official Build) (64-bit) the YouTube notifications are dead in the water here. Verified that YouTube notifications are enabled and Use Google Services for Push Messaging is enabled. Firefox has no issues with receiving notifications. I also notice that Brave can no longer delete specific cookies such as "google.com" on browser shutdown.

[jshan17]

Hello I have Google push notifications enabled AND I have Notifications settings set to allow sites to ask. Only popular sites like Facebook and Trading View are successfully asking for notifications when I visit them, then their push notifications actually send. But news sites like Bitcoinist.com and Youtube are not asking. Does anyone know how to troubleshoot this to enable website push notifications? I’ve already gone to settings and selected, Allow Sites to ask for permission, but my listed sites won’t ask for permission to send notifications. I'm using Windows 10 -Brave is up to date: Version 1.5.113 Chromium: 80.0.3987.149 (Official Build) (64-bit) - just updated today. But I cannot receive notifications from sites like Youtube, Twitter, or Crypto news sites. I've seen many different threads on this topic but none have solved my issue. I've also been able to receive notifications from testing sites listed, but still no improvement. Help??

[megaroeny]

Same issue here with latest Brave version (production build)

[Brave-Matt]

This is still an issue in v1.7.92 -- +1 from Community today:
https://community.brave.com/t/twitter-cannot-activate-push-notifications/119002/2

[bsclifton]

@jshan17 do any of the sites you DO want to get notifications show up here?
brave://settings/content/notifications

You can always manually add them there under Allow - but it should be asking you too (default is to ask). You can also make sure the top level setting is enabled

[seanwu1105]

Though I add Google Drive site to the allow list of notification, Brave still does not function correctly to show the notification.

Brave Version

Brave	1.8.96 Chromium: 81.0.4044.138 (Official Build) (64-bit)
Revision	8c6c7ba89cc9453625af54f11fd83179e23450fa-refs/branch-heads/4044@{#999}
OS	Linux
JavaScript	V8 8.1.307.32
Flash	(Disabled)
User Agent	Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/81.0.4044.138 Safari/537.36

Additional Information

• Does the issue resolve itself when disabling Brave Shields? No.
• Is the issue reproducible on the latest version of Chrome? No.

[bitcoinvsalts]

any update on this very important issue? Google Calendar notifications are not showing up because of this issue.

[ghost]

I love the browser, but push notifications would be nice. 📌

[shadow1349]

I'm not sure why, but blocking FCM has also broken Firebase Callable Functions in Angular. Here's a comment I made for it:

angular/angularfire#2475 (comment)

I don't think there is much the Angular team can do to fix it since it seems the issue is on Brave itself. Now my whole app is broken in Brave since I rely on callable functions.

[jeffjensen]

I believe the blocker for this is https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=1011244 which is assigned to an owner that is OOO until Jan 13

Will mark issue as waiting-upstream

For folks that aren't aware, there is a Use Google Services for Push Messaging option under brave://settings/privacy (set to OFF by default) which, when enabled, may resolve items which are trying to use GCM

Thanks @bsclifton - setting Use Google Services for Push Messaging to on made the Google Drive notification setting able to turn on.

Is Use Google Services for Push Messaging off by default due to security/privacy issues and what are the risks with it on?

[bsclifton]

@jeffjensen yes - it will send a payload to the Google endpoint which will notify you. Folks might not understand (from a privacy perspective) this interaction is being handled by a 3rd party which is why it's disabled by default. If you're OK with that then it's safe to turn on

[jeffh-cloudflare]

I am also experiencing an issue where I am unable to configure notifications for Google Drive. I checked under Site Settings -> Notifications and Google Drive was listed (https://drive.google.com:443) but when I tried to go to Google Drive's settings to enable notifications (Google Drive -> Settings -> Notifications -> Get updates about Google Drive items in your browser), I got the following error message from Google Drive: "Couldn't enable notifications"

This is on a MacBook Pro running macOS Catalina 10.15.7 and Brave Version 1.22.71 Chromium: 89.0.4389.114 (Official Build) (x86_64).

Please let me know if you require any additional information.

[reinux]

Kind of OT, but do common app push notifications on Android go through GCM as well?

[Areckleh]

+1 Community: https://community.brave.com/t/google-drive-notifications-still-not-working/240048/7

[danteafk]

why is this not fixed yet in 2 years + ?

[LampPrinter]

Will this ever be fixed?
I am on MacOS and the notifications in Brave don't stay in notification centre. They just pop up for few seconds and go away.
Anybody knows of a solution. I have already enabled "Use Google services for push messaging".

[conaldev]

I want to have twitter's notifications in brave. plz fix it

[fertingoff]

Guys, any updates on that? Thanks

[LYNK-INCUU]

Guys, any updates on that? Thanks

i mean just use the google service mentioned here
but yeah wish i didnt have to tbh

I believe the blocker for this is https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=1011244 which is assigned to an owner that is OOO until Jan 13
Will mark issue as waiting-upstream
For folks that aren't aware, there is a Use Google Services for Push Messaging option under brave://settings/privacy (set to OFF by default) which, when enabled, may resolve items which are trying to use GCM

Thanks @bsclifton - setting Use Google Services for Push Messaging to on made the Google Drive notification setting able to turn on.

Is Use Google Services for Push Messaging off by default due to security/privacy issues and what are the risks with it on?

[fertingoff]

Guys, any updates on that? Thanks

i mean just use the google service mentioned here but yeah wish i didnt have to tbh

I believe the blocker for this is https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=1011244 which is assigned to an owner that is OOO until Jan 13
Will mark issue as waiting-upstream
For folks that aren't aware, there is a Use Google Services for Push Messaging option under brave://settings/privacy (set to OFF by default) which, when enabled, may resolve items which are trying to use GCM

Thanks @bsclifton - setting Use Google Services for Push Messaging to on made the Google Drive notification setting able to turn on.
Is Use Google Services for Push Messaging off by default due to security/privacy issues and what are the risks with it on?

Thank you. I saw that fix and tried it, but the bug persists (have notifications on other chromium-based browsers though).

[fertingoff]

Post scriptum. I fixed the issue.
For some reason I have two Brave browsers in the notifications (even though only one app).

Google services option is switched off and it works like a charm now.

[pbennett]

@jeffjensen yes - it will send a payload to the Google endpoint which will notify you. Folks might not understand (from a privacy perspective) this interaction is being handled by a 3rd party which is why it's disabled by default. If you're OK with that then it's safe to turn on

By definition, wouldn't push notifications always come from a third-party? 😏