Notifications: Blank notification previews in the beta

[aerych]

Previewing a notification with the internal beta yields a blank preview. For example:

We're not sure if previews were ever supported in the beta, but it would be nice if they could be. More discussion and context available at pbMoDN-1v1-p2#comment-2992 and p4a5px-2FR-p2

[jkmassel]

Just copying a comment from Slack:

Regarding the notification thing it should be possible to fix that – that only happens when the NotificationContentExtension crashes – which is usually because of an invalid data format

There's nothing special about the Internal build that should affect this. Could even be as simple as a signing issue.

@designsimply – this might be a good one for groundskeeping :)

[aerych]

@frosty and I had speculated it could be something related to the app groups.

[designsimply]

fwiw, I tested using a beta build from TestFlight earlier today using the following steps, and it worked in my test.

My testing steps:

1. Start with a private site with more than one user.
   ^{(I tested sending the @-mention notification to someone using the Editor role—because that's our default for P2s—in case that's relevant.)}
2. Create a new post and @-mention the other user on the site.
3. Receive the notification on the lock screen.
4. Long-press on the notification.
5. Expect to see a larger preview.

Result: the larger preview opened properly in my test. (1m41s) ^{Tested with WPiOS 16.3.0.7 TestFlight beta using iPhone 11 iOS 14.2.}

Which means we still need proper steps to reproduce the issue. It would would be helpful if anyone experiencing this issue in the future could note their exact app name and version number and also what type of notification had the problem (new post, comment, @-mention, follow, etc). In the internal references linked above, there were two cases reported with the following app info:

• WPiOS 16.3 (point release was not given) from TestFlight on an iPhone XS iOS 14.2
• WPInternal (version number not provided but my guess is that it was on 16.3.0.20201210)

[designsimply]

@designsimply – this might be a good one for groundskeeping :)

Sure, and I'll also mention that @startuptester is now the person to ping for iOS issues like this in the future.

There's nothing special about the Internal build that should affect this. Could even be as simple as a signing issue.

@jkmassel could you please let me know how each of the following versions were signed?

• WPiOS 16.3.0.0 TestFlight beta
• WPiOS 16.3.0.7 TestFlight beta
• WPInternal 16.3.0.20201210

[frosty]

@designsimply Just a note, if it is due to code signing or app groups, I would expect the TestFlight version to work okay (it uses the same developer account as the production build) but the WPInternal build to not work (as it uses our separate enterprise developer account).

[designsimply]

Thanks for the clarification! Ahhh, ok, hmm, the original report of this problem was from someone using a TestFlight version, so that leads me to believe it might not be a signing issue, but I agree it's worth consideration and was a good point to raise.

^{(internal reference: p4a5px-2FR-p2)}

[dcalhoun]

I experienced this issue on version 16.7 available in the public App Store.

• Device: iPhone 11 Pro
• OS: iOS 14.4
• App name: WordPress
• App version: 16.7

Screenshots

 

[startuptester]

Adding that @astralbodies experienced a version of this as well

If you long touch on a push notification on your lock screen or in the notifications screen, the details show up with a white box for the note.

App version: 16.9 App Store Device model: iPhone 11 Pro & iPhone X OS version: 14.4 & 13.3.1

Uploading rpreplay_final1617395528_mp4_dvd.mp4…

[stronenv]

Hi 👋 I'm experiencing this issue as well, same behavior as mentioned above: If you force touch on a notification on the lock/notification screen, it only displays one line on the top and crops the image, and the rest of the notification is blank/white.

App version: 18.8 Device: iPhone 12 Pro iOS version: 15.1.1 Type of notification: mention (Unconcealed version of the photo posted here: p4a5px-2FR-p2#comment-12603)

Let me know if I can help with any debugging 😄