Option to disable mobile sound/vibration notifications when using Desktop

[virtualdj]

Hi, when using Telegram Desktop is it possible to silence out the notifications on the phone? There are no notifications on the phone, actually they are dismissed successfully, but for every received message I hear the sound/vibration (sometimes it is cut out in the half, as it has been "cancelled").

[fyahfox]

That is possible and yes this is definitely needed. Its pretty annoying...

[kocane]

Yeah this is definitely a much needed thing. If it could be made in way like Facebook Messenger where it somehow knows when you were last active in the webbrowser rather than the app on the phone then avoids notifying on the phone. Right now Ive made a tasker script on my android that i can quickly enable to toggle telegram notifications, but still...

[fyahfox]

Right now there is a dirty workaround by muting the conversation on the phone for 1 hour, but we still need a good solution like Kocayine proposed.

Any feedback if the devs see this as a high priority change? I think many users do...

[Katzen-Gott]

+1 but only if it's optional (Sometimes I don't turn off my office PC and just lock screen, so telegram stays open) By the way, curently, if tdesktop is in focus, my phone recieves notification and dismisses it almost instantly. So instead of 'bzzzzzzzzz' it only makes 'bz' (idk how to explain it more correctly)

[joshsleeper]

@Katzen-Gott My device (Nexus 5, Android 5.0.1) usually buzzes fully still, and is probably only 7/10 for dismissing notifications when the desktop application has focus or is focused (on WiFi or a solid mobile data connection, even), but even with short buzzes it can get annoying if you get a flurry of messages. That said, I totally agree that it should be an optional feature. :+1:

[mattogodoy]

+1 In "Line" it works in a way that if you are active in your Desktop computer, notifications get disabled in your phone. If you're away from your computer, 5 minutes later notifications start to come into the phone.

[kireledan]

wouldn't this involve making a modification to the mobile app as well?

[joshsleeper]

@kireledan You're totally right. Let's bring @DrKLO and @telegramdesktop attention to this!

Any chance this kind of presence detection could be added in? I'd love to automatically silence the vibration+sound on mobile when I've been actively chatting on desktop and vice-versa for desktop sounds when chatting on mobile. In my opinion this is one of the best features desktop+mobile chat programs can have! :smile:

[Katzen-Gott]

@kireledan @joshery420 It looks more like a server thing. Or even overall. At least on iOS, there is the push thing. And I'm not sure, that app can do anything with phone behaviour on pushes. And there is similar thing for androids (google push?), which shoud be considered as well...

[joshsleeper]

@Katzen-Gott Oh there's definitely a server component to getting this working well. I wasn't trying to imply it was all inside the apps. :smile: I'm sure the mobile apps are using push notifications, but the apps still have to be setup to handle those notifications and they can adjust how they handle them based on other conditions (there's already a wide variety of notification settings on mobile, even)

I guess the ideal for me would be that if you're considered "present" on the desktop, mobile notifications would still show (until you viewed the message somewhere, of course) but wouldn't vibrate or make sound. Likewise, if you were considered "present" on mobile the desktop app would show the popups in the corner (maybe?) but not make any sound.

This allows for easy switching between devices/platforms because the notifications are still visible, but not constantly buzzing the phone in my pocket when I chat on desktop or spam ding sounds through my desktop speakers just because I reply on my phone and don't have the desktop app focused.

For the record, my experience is based on the Windows desktop client and the Android mobile app.

[virtualdj]

@joshery420 I totally agree with you.

[Paratron]

Any update on this? Its driving my insane. I'm now trying to manually disable the mobile session from my desktop app settings. Maybe that will mute the notifications. Still needs me to re-login on my phone when I go away from the pc. Very annoying.

[dylanhanning]

@Paratron I usually turn off notifications within the mobile app when I'm at my computer. Works, but can be a bit frustrating if you're doing it often.

[Paratron]

Yeah, I did the same now, too. The session cancelling was a bit overkill :)

[christianromeni]

This should soon be done right? :-)

Smart Notifications Tired of buzzing notifications from active group chats? Sick of multiple notifications every time somebody forwards you a dozen messages? Getting notifications on mobile while chatting with the same person from your desktop? Fixed! Starting today, you will be notified only when it is necessary. https://telegram.org/blog/captions-places

[charlieegan3]

👍 great news.

[ZackStone]

Not works for me... Android app and desktop are updated.

[fyahfox]

When you are using the Desktop app and you mark the messages as "read" with the Desktop app, your phone stays quiet.

[N0x1k]

So it seems that this was sadly not part of the "Smart notifications" update :-/

[fyahfox]

No idea what you are talking about.

Current version has "smart notifications" (set max. x notifications in y minutes) and the phone stays quiet when you are in a conversation on the desktop app.

[darknight7]

That's correct but only if the desktop app has focus. I think the problem is all there: different opinions on what "in a conversation on the desktop" ultimately means.

[N0x1k]

Oh I didn't even notice that I don't get notifications on the phone when the app is in focus on desktop, because I always do other stuff on the PC, that way the app is never in focus when I'm chatting with someone.

[Paratron]

That definitely needs a fix. I think you can assume to be in a conversion on the desktop if the mobile is locked and the mouse + keyboard is used on desktop, even if the app is NOT focused.

[SH-Andre]

The developers should probably take a look at how Slack works:

•    If desktop app is active: first notify in desktop app

•    If message(s) unread after X (like 30) seconds: notify in mobile app

•    On top of that (this would probably be bogus for Telegram): if still unread in mobile app, it sends an email notification

If would be even nicer if it also had some options for customization (for example: how long to wait before notifying in mobile app). And it could also account for whether or not there is any activity on the desktop in general – because if the desktop is completely idle, then the notification could go straight to mobile.

From: Christian Engel [mailto:notifications@github.com] Sent: maandag 18 mei 2015 10:37 To: telegramdesktop/tdesktop Cc: Andre van Vliet Subject: Re: [tdesktop] Option to disable mobile sound/vibration notifications when using Desktop (#277)

That definitely needs a fix. I think you can assume to be in a conversion on the desktop if the mobile is locked and the mouse + keyboard is used on desktop, even if the app is NOT focused.

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHubhttps://github.com/telegramdesktop/tdesktop/issues/277#issuecomment-102975615.

[ZackStone]

That's exactly what is on the last comment that I think should be implemented. And this "X minutes" can be configured by the user. He spoke all.

[ghost]

+1 from me too. Also have to keep asking a colleague to stop his phone vibrating while he's using telegram desktop as it just constantly buzzing away in our office while he has his headphones on

[Jamesits]

I think this is possible: when a message comes in, first send notifications to currently active device or the last active device. If in 30secs the message is still unread, send notifications to every device.

[ghost]

+1 Why has this not been implemented yet? This problem is extremely irritating and makes chatting on Telegram a chore. I usually tell people to message me on other platforms instead when I'm on my desktop.

[ghost]

I dont think anyone from telegram is even reading this... i've had a load of +1 emails but no comment from a telegram developer. Please someone take a look... a lot of people are asking for this to be fixed.

On Wed, 15 Jul 2015 22:21 Tobias Umbach notifications@github.com wrote:

+1 Why has this not been implemented yet? This problem is extremely irritating and makes chatting on Telegram a chore. I usually tell people to message me on other platforms instead when I'm on my desktop.

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub https://github.com/telegramdesktop/tdesktop/issues/277#issuecomment-121753089 .

[christianromeni]

Im pritty sure @telegramdesktop has read it quite often.. But just has not replyed to it..

[Siguza]

I just realised this is a duplicate of a declined feature request: #36

[ghost]

Ha .. so hundreds of people want it but developers wont do it. Nice. Back to hangouts and whatsapp then

[Siguza]

Wait, I might have misunderstood the meaning of that answer. They basically only said it's not a desktop issue... @telegramdesktop Would you mind pointing us to a place where we can file feature requests for telegram in general/the mobile client/server-side stuff?

[Matteomt]

I'm not involved with development, but I think this problem would be managed more efficiently server-side, by getting aware of what device the user is active on and thus sending push notifications accordingly. I think it would be very hard to do the same client-side without specific support from server.

An idea (maybe not new):

1. When a message gets marked as read, this event information starts from the active device, goes to the server and propagates to each connected device of the user (this is evidence).
2. So... The event-message is associated with the source device (server knows) and so is the read-mark (suppose the server lets other devices know -- possible, maybe real, MAKE it real otherwise!).
3. (The trick) Each chat message could be marked, not simply as read or not read, but also with a list of all the devices that have visualized the message.
4. Now the client can determine the last active device.
5. Show android notification, or pop-up or other alarm with 0 delay if this is the last active device, long delay (like 30sec or 3sec with silent notification) otherwise. An alternative to point 3. is keeping a table with device / last-read-timestamp association, like what Hangouts seems to do (then show on screen only the last active device timestamp as an icon following the last read message).

So you get notifications on the last device you used to read a message, then on others with a delay. Note that this is chat-dipendent, but we can solve it:

1. When the user opens telegram, the server knows it is active and the event is associated with the device. ...etc. The user may not see this info, as not usefull, but the key point may be notifying each device (of the user) was last active.

Anyway, while the problem is not solved server-side, every developer should try to fix problems like this with some sort of duct tape.

Meanwhile, I simply mute my phone while I'm at the PC. Because is reasonable and because I still prefere Telegram.

[muadnu]

+1 But here's something (maybe) interesting. I've been using the telegram plugin for pidgin (in linux), and it turns out that I don't get notifications on my phone when using it (regardless of the window having focus or not). It is not really behaving smartly, as (I think) I don't get notifications at all on my phone until I close the application on my desktop, but it's still better. Unfortunately, a couple of days ago the pidgin plugin started crashing as soon as I write a message.

[auchri]

Notifications are send to all devices, but only the last active device shows the notification. If you read the message, the notification is removed from the other devices too.

[joshsleeper]

@auchri If I'm understanding what you're saying correctly it just isn't true. Even if I'm regularly chatting on the desktop, if the desktop client doesn't have focus all of my devices notify with a vibrate or sound, even if it was only a second or two since my last message on the Desktop. ONLY if the desktop client is focused do the other devices not notify, at least for me.

[auchri]

Yes, that's true. But that's server related: https://twitter.com/telegram :)

[joshsleeper]

Oh it certainly is, I'm just saying that your claim that "only the last active device shows the notification" isn't entirely true. :wink: Thanks for being so active @auchri! Glad to have you around.

[auchri]

All official clients implemented some improvements month's ago: https://github.com/telegramdesktop/tdesktop/commit/dde1a5a6eb20cbae51b09eb1da0de39a91a99f06

I think this issue can be closed?

[joshsleeper]

Huh, interesting. That's what I'd assumed had happened with the "Smart Notification" update, but it didn't seem to be the case in my experience. I'll test tomorrow, but I think my phone still buzzes immediately if the desktop client doesn't have focus, which would imply that the delayed notifications aren't working right.

[darknight7]

If I focus the desktop client within a couple of seconds the phone won't buzz. In other words if chatting is not my main task (almost never is) I still have to silence notifications to avoid annoying other people around. My personal opinion is that not all clients are equal. The desktop client is more equal than the others :wink: and should "capture" the notifications. At least with an option, that's my use case.

[joshsleeper]

Alright, I tested it tonight over maybe 50 messages between a pair of friends and I, so here's how it seems to be working for me. If the desktop client is open AND has focus AND the chat receiving messages is open, only then will my other devices stay quiet. However, if any of those conditions aren't met it seems like I get notifications on my desktop first, giving roughly a 2-4 second window (varying network and system conditions I'm sure) to focus the desktop app before all of my other devices notify like normal. That means that even if I'm actively chatting in one conversation, if I don't switch to the other conversation(s) with new messages within that 4 second window, all of my devices still buzz. This seems to be pretty similar to what @darknight7 described, so I'm assuming it's working the way it was intended.

I would posit that many people logged into Telegram on a computer aren't going to be there for just a couple of minutes. Many of us are at home or work, actively using the system for hours at a time possibly. In my opionion, as long as the desktop app is logged in and running, if I've used my mouse/keyboard within the last maybe 5-10 minutes it shouldn't notify other devices. Alternatively, if the desktop is "active" maybe the mobile devices can notify immediately but without making sounds or vibrating? That is, update the mobile clients and show the notification on the device, but do it silently. Not sure how much notification control is there on mobile platforms for something like that. @DrKLO

Also, tweeted about this thread, so hopefully it gets some attention, since this is my single biggest annoyance with Telegram right now. https://twitter.com/joshery420/status/632810144082976769 @auchri I know this isn't under your control, but it certainly is related to what the desktop client considers an "active" user, so I feel like it's safe to keep open for now. @telegramdesktop You might have a bit more control over this though, depending on how the active status is determined.

[Katzen-Gott]

Please stop adding "+1". It won't make issue resolved any faster (or sooner), and it only bothers those who want to receive updates on the issue. If you want to receive updates as well, there is "Watch" button at the top, you don't need to add a comment to start "watching" the issue.

[JarrettBillingsley]

For me there's not even a delay. As SOON as I receive a message -- often even when I have desktop telegram focused -- my phone plinks too. It's incredibly annoying. I don't want to have to log out of mobile telegram (and then have to log back in...) just to get it to shut up.

[Jamesits]

@vvoody On my experience, Wechat does simply notify everywhere or none if you choose to disable phone notification when PC client is logged in.

On Wed, Oct 28, 2015, 14:44 vvoody notifications@github.com wrote:

+1

Wechat does well in this situation.

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub https://github.com/telegramdesktop/tdesktop/issues/277#issuecomment-151740881 .

[lawrencegs]

Yes please, this is one of the little details that matters. UX matters.

[vvoody]

@Jamesits Nope. Wechat use different ways to login same account at same time. Say, if you want to use Wechat on PC, you have to use Wechat on your phone to authorize the PC client. In this mode, if you mainly use on desktop, e.g. chatting in work time :D, by default Wechat will mute mobile app. But for Telegram, both mobile app and desktop app are always online, which means receive notifications on both sides. That is annoying.

[Jamesits]

@vvoody In my use case, I log in Wechat Mac client every morning (it disconnects automatically at night when my Mac falls asleep and AC power is cut off, which is another annoying story) like any other IM I use (Hangouts, Telegram, QQ, etc.), then if I need to leave my computer, I lock it and take my phone around. So if I disable notification on phone when logged in on computer, I got nothing when I'm away with the phone; if I enable that, my computer rings and my phone vibrates when I'm in front of my computer. What's more, if I read a message on my computer, it remains unread on the phone. So basically to me, the notification model of Wechat is unusable.

[lawrencegs]

Not sure about wechat, but the model of Google Hangouts is working great for me. It detects which one I'm last active, then only push notification to that device. All other devices will update the read/unread statuses periodically.