Push Clients/Manager
Push messages are usually realized via Google's Firebase Cloud Messaging – which is proprietary and requires Google Services (or microG) installed on your device, requiring a persistent connection to Google servers. Privacy proponents rather avoid that. Without Push notifications, applications need to revert to polling if they want updates. While this is perfectly fine with asynchronous communication like Mail, it's very inconvenient with synchronous communications like chat and even more incoming IP calls in messengers.
Luckily, there are alternatives – finally! Now if only all apps would support them! Or at least one of them: UnifiedPush tries to combine them all (Gotify, NoProvider2Push and even Google's FCM) into one interface, so app developers only need to support this one client – and the user has the choice…
Unified Push
UnifiedPush helps you use the notification service of your own choice. This allows you keeping your privacy, while still having the benefits of push notifications: fast responses, a single network connection shared by all apps and thus rather minimal needs of resources. You can read more at their homepage, I'll just give you a TL;DR here:
- decide for your favorite push server (e.g. your own Nextcloud, or a Gotify server of your choice)
- install the corresponding distributor (e.g. NextPush for a Nextcloud, or Gotify-UP for a Gotify server)
- register your client with your server (aka open your distributor app and "log in")
- profit: In each app supporting UP, choose your local distributor. All notifications will go via your chosen server then.
Read more about UnifiedPush, how it works and how to use it (both from a developer's and an end-user's perspective) in the article UnifiedPush: a decentralized, open-source push notification protocol.
- ntfy - PUT/POST to your phone (4.9@719) Ǥ 13 1 LastUpdate: 2022-12-14 Github; you can also send notifications to your Android device with simple HTTP PUT/POST calls (e.g. via
curl
orwget
) - gCompat UP-Distributor (0@0) Ǥ 8 1 Github; FCM = Firebase Cloud Messaging (Google's servers)
- NextPush (0@0) 10 Github
- NoProvider2Push (0@0) 4 LastUpdate: 2021-09-01 Github
- UP-Example (0@0) 4 Github; example client & tester for UnifiedPush
- Conversations can act as distributor, instructions here
Other Push Clients/Manager
- Gotify (4.9@263) 9 Github; also allows you receiving notifications from your Nextcloud, Raspi, PC… via a Gotify Server (which you can also self-host)
- Push Notifications API (4.4@10) 4 Github; for your own push notifications, think IoT & Co
- FCM toolbox (1@32) Ǥ 7 test & debug Firebase Cloud Messaging
Further Readings: