Notifications - Not all applications listed

[aplumez]

Hello!

I installed GSConnect from https://extensions.gnome.org/ and almost everything is working fine.

I would like my Google Chrome notifications on my desktop (Ubuntu 22.04) to be sent to my Android device, the problem is that I don't see Google Chrome in the list of applications in "GSConnect Preferences > Devices > Notifications" pane, so I can't enable it.

Do you have any idea what could be missing?

Thank you!

[ferdnyc]

@aplumez

Chrome doesn't show up in the list for me, either. And, testing with https://www.bennish.net/web-notifications.html, notifications it creates aren't picked up by GSConnect. I think I see why.

GSConnect watches for notifications being created, and attempts to connect them back to a source application. The ones it's successful for, it adds to the Applications list for Notifications. It attempts to trace a notification back to its source application by using the "appName" field of the notification.

But when it comes to Chrome notifications (and probably others like them, which use the freedesktop Notifications interface), we're not looking at the correct field of the message, so we're not correctly matching it up to Chrome as the source.

I've opened issue #1591 about the detection bug.

[ferdnyc]

@aplumez

This should now be fixed in the development code. If you'd like to test it out, you can download a build of GSConnect with the fix applied from this page: https://github.com/GSConnect/gnome-shell-extension-gsconnect/actions/runs/4613247847

By clicking on [email protected] in the Artifacts section at the bottom. The extension will download as a .zip file that you can install from a terminal session:

cd /path/to/downloaded/file
gnome-extensions install --force [email protected]

And then you'll probably need to log out and log back in, to activate the updated extension.

The artifact link is good for some fixed amount of time, I can't remember how long but I think it's pretty long — 90 days, or something like that.

[ferdnyc]

Er, wait, sorry, let me correct those last two.

[ferdnyc]

OK, NOW you can copy-paste them into a terminal. 😁

[aplumez]

Yay, working fine! I got my notification forwarded, thank you!

[ferdnyc]

Glad to hear it! I nearly have a fix ready for the issues with permissions when installing test extensions from GitHub Actions artifacts, so that hopefully won't bite anyone else in the future.

In the meantime, I'm going to close this discussion as completed. But feel free to open a new one, or file bug reports in Issues, if you run into any more problems with notification-forwarding (or anything else).

[ferdnyc]

@aplumez

So, turns out I was wrong about the GNOME versioning. That build of GSConnect linked above is from after the codebase dropped support for GNOME Shell 43, and even if things are working now, you may hit troubles next time you restart. (The Quick Settings button code uses new APIs, because GNOME 44 deprecated some of the ones from
GNOME 43, and replaced them with new ones that didn't exist in GNOME 43.)

This build of GSConnect is made from the version 54 code, but has the notifications fix added in. I'd recommend gnome-extensions install --force-ing it over the version you currently have installed, just to be safe.

[email protected]