I know updates have been comming slow the last few weeks, though I have been hard at work writing a push notification server for Arctic. You can now enable push notifications in settings on a per-account basis. Push notifications currently include Post and Comment replies, as well as Private Messages.
Whats to come: I’m currently working on adding support for more granular notification options. Such as disabling certain types of notifications like Private Messages. I am also working on setting up more notification types such as :
- Username Mentions
- Community Watchers
- Mod Reports
- User Applications
About the notification service. In order to provide push notifications, your account auth token (jwt) needs to be uploaded to the server. This is required in order to fetch content from your Lemmy account on your behalf. These tokens remain valid until you logout of Arctic, or change your password. No identifying data is collected for notifications, only a device token that Apple uses to forward the notifications to your device. When disabling notifications in Arctic, your auth and device token will be purged from the server.
Will push notifications be subscription based?
Running a notification server does cost money. While builing Arctic, I’ve always had the goal of keeping all features free for everyone in the spirit of the fediverse. With that said, I have been trying to come up with a modal that would allow me to add notifications without locking them behind a paywall.
I decided to offer basic notifications as a free service allowing everyone access to replies, messages, and mentions. Advanced notifications such as community watchers, Mod, and Admin notifications, there will be a small subscription fee.
I have not settled on pricing for for the subscription just yet. I’ll be offering these notifications for free during TestFlight beta testing.
v0.2.6 Release
Though this version is as primarily focused on push notifications, I also addressed a few other issues, and added a few features.
Arctic now has a Safari Extension, this extension allows you to open any Lemmy url from safari in Arctic. You can configure the extension to automatically open the page in Arctic, or add a banner to the top of the page so you can open the page in Arctic. The rest of the changes were primarily minor bug fixes.
v0.2.6.1 Release
This was simply a hotfix for a loading issue introduced in v0.2.6 that caused issues loading link previews, and scroll performance issues.
v0.2.6.1 Changelog
- Reverted some crash fixes from v0.2.6 that would cause link loading to fail, and scroll performance degradation.
v0.2.6 Changelog
- Added support for Account Notifications
- Added “Open In Arctic” Safari extension
- Fixed a bug that would cause a crash when parsing certain urls
- Fixed Post Compose View “Post” button not restoring after an error occurred
- Added a warning that shows when trying to submit a post without a title
- Fixed comment Scroll To Selection not always scrolling to the correct position
- Fixed comment separators not properly displaying on all comments
- Fixed comment highlighting not showing
- Fixed issue that could cause post titles to be cropped vertically when viewing an image post
- Fixed media viewer status bar not behaving correctly in some cases
- Fixed media viewer action buttons not showing when viewing a gallery
- Added swipe actions for voting in the inbox
- Fixed community feed action menu icons
- Added App Icon selection settings (only 2 icons at the moment)
Fixed some crashes that would occur randomly for some users due to tableview updates(reverted in v0.2.6.1)- Fixed moderated communities view not displaying communities when viewing profiles other than your own
- Fixed “Scroll To Top” tab bar action not always completing
This might be a user error, but I’m getting an error when I try to allow push notifications.
Push Notification Error
Looks like at some point you turned off notifications for Arctic in settings, or denied notifications in a popup. Once that happens, Arctic won’t be able to ask for permission again. To fix that, go to the settings app on your phone. Settings > Arctic > Notifications > Allow Notifications.
Apple only allows apps to request permission for notifications once, after that the user must go to settings and manually enable notifications.
I just updated the notification settings to include showing the status of the notification permissions. You can now tap the info (i) button on the status and it will instruct the user how to handle any permissions issues, and also provide a button to open Arctic’s notification settings in the settings app.
Thanks for letting me know about the issue!
Thanks! You were right. All fixed on my end.