Use UnifiedPush for push notifications

[iiitomo]

Current K9-mail beta doesn't provide push notifications.
I wish K9-mail provides Push notifications and allows me choose my distributor for Push Notifications. (e.g. so that I can use Gotify instead of FCM / Google services)

UnifiedPush is a recent FOSS library that allows this, I suggest to include it in K9-mail.

See https://unifiedpush.org and Matrix discussion on #unifiedpush:matrix.org
Also #5123 might give additional info.

[Atemu]

Do any mail servers implement UnifiedPush already?

[hockeymikey]

Could we have proxy/inbetween server for the notifications? I know many servers won't implement unified push (like gmail, o365), so a self hostable proxy server that can watch for new emails from accounts, send a notification and similar to snapchat, k9 can go out with a background service to fetch the new emails from the accounts in the push notification.
Could even expand that functionality out to FCM if users want it, functionally behaving the same way.

[Bugsbane]

I already use both k9 mail and Nextcloud mail to read my mail, depending on the device I'm on. Therefore Nextcloud knows both about my new mail and my Unified Push provider. I wonder if there's an opportunity there, like having NextcloudMail push a notification to K9 mail?

Obviously not everyone runs Nextcloud Mail, but Nextcloud is already very popular with self hosters, and Nextcloud Mail is very easy to add on to it.

Might it be worth making a feature suggestion over there?

[cketti]

Using an external service for Push notifications is not something IMAP currently supports. See #5827.

[dessalines]

Maybe this issue needs to be solved at the email provider level: they are after all the ones running servers and pushing updates. Its up to someone to create an email service, self-hostable or not, that also runs its own unifiedpush instance, or uses the global one, to push updates to clients.

After that, it would be on email clients like k9 to integrate with ntfy to receive them.

Would be a bit of work, but its far better for battery and security, than either relying on google FCM, or having background services running, or doing periodic polling. ntfy is really wonderful on battery life, and can potentially support any app that needs notifs.

[Bugsbane]

Yes, ultimately it is up to the server, whatever that is, to provide the push notifications. The scope of K9/TB should be the ability to register with UnifiedPush (whether NTFY, or another UnifiedPush provider) the same way that Fedilab does for UnifiedPush notifications sent by the Mastodon server.

Ultimately the goal is to have K9/TB not have to poll for new mail at all, but just get woken when UnifiedPush neds a notification, so we can save battery and bandwidth.

[williamdes]

Could we have proxy/inbetween server for the notifications? I know many servers won't implement unified push (like gmail, o365), so a self hostable proxy server that can watch for new emails from accounts, send a notification and similar to snapchat, k9 can go out with a background service to fetch the new emails from the accounts in the push notification. Could even expand that functionality out to FCM if users want it, functionally behaving the same way.

I think about the same, not a lot servers will implement it. Let's even say it will be niche situations.
I know there is some known projects that provide such proxy things, but from what I know it's not serious software

Let me know if my knowledge is outdated

But for know and for what I actually know of the email world we will have to continue pulling emails to find new ones

[hockeymikey]

@williamdes It's nothing about any servers implementing it. The proxy is a shim between the client and the email server that is hosted by the user. You share credentials with that push proxy server and it polls instead of the mobile client. Doesn't seem super complex in my head for implementation, rather a question of dev hours and where they are most needed.

[williamdes]

@williamdes It's nothing about any servers implementing it. The proxy is a shim between the client and the email server that is hosted by the user. You share credentials with that push proxy server and it polls instead of the mobile client. Doesn't seem super complex in my head for implementation, rather a question of dev hours and where they are most needed.

Can you share documentation links?

[hockeymikey]

@williamdes Docs about what?

[cketti]

Please don't use the issue tracker for discussions that are at best tangentially related to K-9 Mail. Use the forum instead.

[hockeymikey]

@cketti They are directly related to the issue at hand. The forum isn't best for that.

[cketti]

Discussions about designing a proxy server that supports Unified Push is very much outside the scope of this issue and this repository.