[GH-ISSUE #1652] Add a setting to toggle the 15-minutes notification

BreizhHardware commented

2026-05-07 00:30:39 +02:00

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Originally created by @TheRealOne78 on GitHub (Mar 12, 2026).
Original GitHub issue: https://github.com/binwiederhier/ntfy/issues/1652

Ever since the last update (v1.24, Android, F-Droid), when I turn off Wi-Fi or mobile data, I get a "Connection Lost: Unable to connect to n servers for more than 15 minutes" notification, which is on high prio... I was just trying to sleep

Only after checking the news from the F-Droid page for NTFY I found out that the notification has a button "Never show [again]" (which from my point of view, it's not something that I'd pay attention to), but that's not good enough.

💡 Idea

It would be awesome if there would be a setting to toggle this. This way, people don't have to wait 15 minutes to turn it off. Not only that, but if you press "Never show", will you be able to turn it on again?
This notification is part of the "High priority" notification category. I believe that it would be better if this would have a separate category instead.

💻 Target components

Android app (perhaps iOS and web too?)

Originally created by @TheRealOne78 on GitHub (Mar 12, 2026). Original GitHub issue: https://github.com/binwiederhier/ntfy/issues/1652  Ever since the last update (v1.24, Android, F-Droid), when I turn off Wi-Fi or mobile data, I get a "Connection Lost: Unable to connect to n servers for more than 15 minutes" notification, which is on high prio... _I was just trying to sleep_ Only after checking the news from the F-Droid page for NTFY I found out that the notification has a button "Never show [again]" (which from my point of view, it's not something that I'd pay attention to), but that's not good enough. :bulb: **Idea**  1. It would be awesome if there would be a setting to toggle this. This way, people don't have to wait 15 minutes to turn it off. Not only that, but if you press "Never show", will you be able to turn it on again? 2. This notification is part of the "High priority" notification category. I believe that it would be better if this would have a separate category instead. :computer: **Target components**   Android app (perhaps iOS and web too?)

BreizhHardware added the

enhancement

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2026-05-07 00:30:39 +02:00

BreizhHardware commented

2026-05-07 00:30:39 +02:00

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@drJeckyll commented on GitHub (Mar 12, 2026):

Second to that. This just make me stop my bike to see what's going on. Annoying ...

@drJeckyll commented on GitHub (Mar 12, 2026): Second to that. This just make me stop my bike to see what's going on. Annoying ...

BreizhHardware commented

2026-05-07 00:30:40 +02:00

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@binwiederhier commented on GitHub (Mar 12, 2026):

Maybe I'll just remove it altogether. It was supposed to be an improvement. People have asked for this ;-)

But it seems to be more of a "bug" than a feature to people.

@binwiederhier commented on GitHub (Mar 12, 2026): Maybe I'll just remove it altogether. It was supposed to be an improvement. People have asked for this ;-) But it seems to be more of a "bug" than a feature to people.

BreizhHardware commented

2026-05-07 00:30:40 +02:00

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@thgoebel commented on GitHub (Mar 13, 2026):

I turn airplane mode every evening. And yesterday after 15 minutes I got a long vibration from ntfy-android due to this new feature :)

If this feature is to stay, I would suggest to:

Reduce the notification priority to PRIORITY_DEFAULT. The loss of server connection is not a drop-everything-and-look-at-your-phone situation. (As also suggested by the OP.)
In the computation of the "15 minute interval", take into account whether the phone has a working internet connection.
- At night, on a plane, or on a hike in the mountains it does not make sense for ntfy to notify me that internet connection is lost.
- If anything, this is the job of the OS. If every app that has some form of background sync would notify me about "no internet", I would be spammed by a lot of notifications.

More fundamentally, what problem is this feature addressing? In what situation would this feature notify users, and is that useful in those situations?

Case 1: Phone looses WiFi/mobile data:
- There is nothing ntfy can do to fix this. This is an OS problem, not an app problem (see above).
Case 2: ntfy server goes down:
- This is mostly relevant for self-hosters, who want an easy uptime monitoring solution.
- Imho the end-user app is the wrong place for this. For example, if I self-host ntfy for my family or my community, there is no need to notify every family member that the server is down. It's enough if the sysadmin (me) gets a ping.
- As a good sysadmin, I anyway need monitoring (for uptime, for expiring certificates, for malicious certs in CT logs, etc.). This is a sysadmin problem, not an app problem.
- Just imagine the chaos if ${BIG_TECH_APP} would ping every of their X billion users when they have a server outage...
Case 3: Network problem between the phone and the server:
- For example, a corporate or national firewall preventing communication between the app and the server.

Case 3 is the only case where I see some usefulness of having a notification. But for that, ntfy-android should check that the phone has an internet connection (as mentioned at the top).

Additionally, I would increase the timeout. 15 minutes is relatively short, it will include temporary network problems, temporary downtime due to doing maintenance on a self-hosted server, and other hickups (basically, Case 2). Imho there will be to much noise and "false" positives by using 15 minutes. I would increase it to 1 hour.

@thgoebel commented on GitHub (Mar 13, 2026): I turn airplane mode every evening. And yesterday after 15 minutes I got a long vibration from ntfy-android due to this new feature :) If this feature is to stay, I would suggest to: 1. Reduce the notification priority to PRIORITY_DEFAULT. The loss of server connection is not a drop-everything-and-look-at-your-phone situation. (As also suggested by the OP.) 2. In the computation of the "15 minute interval", take into account whether the phone has a working internet connection. - At night, on a plane, or on a hike in the mountains it does not make sense for ntfy to notify me that internet connection is lost. - If anything, this is the job of the OS. If every app that has some form of background sync would notify me about "no internet", I would be spammed by a lot of notifications. ------ More fundamentally, what problem is this feature addressing? In what situation would this feature notify users, and is that useful in those situations? 1. **Case 1: Phone looses WiFi/mobile data:** - There is nothing ntfy can do to fix this. This is an OS problem, not an app problem (see above). 2. **Case 2: ntfy server goes down:** - This is mostly relevant for self-hosters, who want an easy **uptime monitoring** solution. - Imho the end-user app is the wrong place for this. For example, if I self-host ntfy for my family or my community, there is no need to notify every family member that the server is down. It's enough if the sysadmin (me) gets a ping. - As a good sysadmin, I anyway need monitoring (for uptime, for expiring certificates, for malicious certs in CT logs, etc.). This is a sysadmin problem, not an app problem. - Just imagine the chaos if ${BIG_TECH_APP} would ping every of their X billion users when they have [a server outage](https://www.theregister.com/2025/10/20/amazon_aws_outage/)... 3. **Case 3: Network problem between the phone and the server:** - For example, a corporate or national firewall preventing communication between the app and the server. Case 3 is the only case where I see some usefulness of having a notification. But for that, ntfy-android should check that the phone has an internet connection (as mentioned at the top). Additionally, I would increase the timeout. 15 minutes is relatively short, it will include temporary network problems, temporary downtime due to doing maintenance on a self-hosted server, and other hickups (basically, Case 2). Imho there will be to much noise and "false" positives by using 15 minutes. I would increase it to 1 hour.

BreizhHardware commented

2026-05-07 00:30:40 +02:00

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@c11umw commented on GitHub (Mar 13, 2026):

I second this.
We self host 2 NTFY.
One which is reverse proxy available anywhere and an internal only one, connected to a monitor of our main one.

Whenever we're no longer on home Wifi we get the 15 minute alert for the internal channel.
If we clear the notification on the phone it comes back.
If we set the channel to mute for n hrs and clear the notification then it still comes back.

Please add the alert as an option per channel (default on)

We had to roll back versions and pin it in Google Play to stop it pinging us every time we popped out.

@c11umw commented on GitHub (Mar 13, 2026): I second this. We self host 2 NTFY. One which is reverse proxy available anywhere and an internal only one, connected to a monitor of our main one. Whenever we're no longer on home Wifi we get the 15 minute alert for the internal channel. If we clear the notification on the phone it comes back. If we set the channel to mute for n hrs and clear the notification then it still comes back. Please add the alert as an option per channel (default on) We had to roll back versions and pin it in Google Play to stop it pinging us every time we popped out.

BreizhHardware commented

2026-05-07 00:30:40 +02:00

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@thinkingpaint commented on GitHub (Mar 13, 2026):

I really do like this feature. I am self-hosting and my home ISP sometimes goes down and it's a very simple way to make sure I know that I will not get my NTFY notifications. However, I agree this needs to be listed as a seperate notification category in Android so it's not together with the high priority notifications. I used the "never show" button assuming I could turn it back on later once I was reconnected to the internet, but I see no way in the apps settings to re-enable it other than (presumably) completely resetting the app data.

@thinkingpaint commented on GitHub (Mar 13, 2026): I really do like this feature. I am self-hosting and my home ISP sometimes goes down and it's a very simple way to make sure I know that I will not get my NTFY notifications. However, I agree this needs to be listed as a seperate notification category in Android so it's not together with the high priority notifications. I used the "never show" button assuming I could turn it back on later once I was reconnected to the internet, but I see no way in the apps settings to re-enable it other than (presumably) completely resetting the app data.

BreizhHardware commented

2026-05-07 00:30:40 +02:00

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@c11umw commented on GitHub (Mar 17, 2026):

Maybe I'll just remove it altogether. It was supposed to be an improvement. People have asked for this ;-)

But it seems to be more of a "bug" than a feature to people.

I think it's a good idea for channels that have a high importance for admins that haven't set up a secondary monitoring system, but for lo-pri or social channels, which I'm sure make up the majority use case, it's overkill (imo).

For the majority, receiving topic messages as soon as they [re]connect to the channel is all they need. Those with "mission critical" systems then yes, I can see that they'd want this, but I'm sure that's a minority. Having it as a per-channel option would cover both user types.

@c11umw commented on GitHub (Mar 17, 2026): > Maybe I'll just remove it altogether. It was supposed to be an improvement. People have asked for this ;-) > > But it seems to be more of a "bug" than a feature to people. I think it's a good idea for channels that have a high importance for admins that haven't set up a secondary monitoring system, but for lo-pri or social channels, which I'm sure make up the majority use case, it's overkill (imo). For the majority, receiving topic messages as soon as they [re]connect to the channel is all they need. Those with "mission critical" systems then yes, I can see that they'd want this, but I'm sure that's a minority. Having it as a per-channel option would cover both user types.

BreizhHardware commented

2026-05-07 00:30:40 +02:00

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@binwiederhier commented on GitHub (Mar 17, 2026):

The amount of friction this creates, even angry emails and bad Google Reviews, leads me to believe that the amount of people that hate this feature is greater than the amount of people that like it.

I've already changed the feature once, and I don't feel like playing a guessing game as to what people want for multiple releases. If I make the feature opt-in, people will not use it because they won't know it's there. If it's opt-out people will complain. There is a "Never alert" button, yet people don't see that and still give me bad reviews and write angry emails.

I will remove this feature.

@binwiederhier commented on GitHub (Mar 17, 2026): The amount of friction this creates, even angry emails and bad Google Reviews, leads me to believe that the amount of people that hate this feature is greater than the amount of people that like it. I've already changed the feature once, and I don't feel like playing a guessing game as to what people want for multiple releases. If I make the feature opt-in, people will not use it because they won't know it's there. If it's opt-out people will complain. There is a "Never alert" button, yet people don't see that and still give me bad reviews and write angry emails. I will remove this feature.

BreizhHardware commented

2026-05-07 00:30:40 +02:00

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@drJeckyll commented on GitHub (Mar 17, 2026):

There is a "Never alert" button, yet people don't see that and still give me bad reviews and write angry emails.

Like @TheRealOne78 said, even if people see that option they will never clicked it, since there is no obvious way to restore it if is needed later. For example I saw the "Never alert", but don't click it. Instead opened the options in the app to search a way to turn it off, then checked notification options in android for Ntfy. It wasn't there, so I come to fill a request for that option, but found this bug.

I don't see a point of this feature just like @thgoebel explained - Ntfy can't do much if I'm in the woods without coverage. Syncthing for example also have notification if there is no connection, but it can be controlled trough android notification settings. Ntfy have only Default, High, Low, Max, Min for prio - that's OK, but no way to control that offline notification behavior.

Since this feature is already implemented and on by default, at least by my humble opinion easiest way is just to put toggle in app settings or android notifications settings, so it can be turned off.

@drJeckyll commented on GitHub (Mar 17, 2026): > There is a "Never alert" button, yet people don't see that and still give me bad reviews and write angry emails. Like @TheRealOne78 said, even if people see that option they will never clicked it, since there is no obvious way to restore it if is needed later. For example I saw the "Never alert", but don't click it. Instead opened the options in the app to search a way to turn it off, then checked notification options in android for Ntfy. It wasn't there, so I come to fill a request for that option, but found this bug. I don't see a point of this feature just like @thgoebel explained - Ntfy can't do much if I'm in the woods without coverage. Syncthing for example also have notification if there is no connection, but it can be controlled trough android notification settings. Ntfy have only Default, High, Low, Max, Min for prio - that's OK, but no way to control that offline notification behavior. Since this feature is already implemented and on by default, at least by my humble opinion easiest way is just to put toggle in app settings or android notifications settings, so it can be turned off.

BreizhHardware commented

2026-05-07 00:30:41 +02:00

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@simonwiles commented on GitHub (Mar 20, 2026):

Yeah for my part I'd like to keep the setting, just have it low priority 👍️ -- and I think it's fine to have it opt-in, although I think opt-out is fine too 🤷‍♂️.

@simonwiles commented on GitHub (Mar 20, 2026): Yeah for my part I'd like to keep the setting, just have it low priority 👍️ -- and I think it's fine to have it opt-in, although I think opt-out is fine too 🤷‍♂️.

BreizhHardware commented

2026-05-07 00:30:41 +02:00

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@tomansill commented on GitHub (Apr 20, 2026):

Yeah, I'm experiencing the same thing and I would like a toggle button to disable this. I go out of cell coverage often and I always see this unwelcome alert repeatedly.

I understand that some people have requested this, but I think it'd be better to use a third party service like UptimeRobot to check if the server is up. I am requesting that at least make it toggle-able so I can disable this myself, but others can enable it if it fits their use case.

@tomansill commented on GitHub (Apr 20, 2026): Yeah, I'm experiencing the same thing and I would like a toggle button to disable this. I go out of cell coverage often and I always see this unwelcome alert repeatedly. I understand that some people have requested this, but I think it'd be better to use a third party service like UptimeRobot to check if the server is up. I am requesting that at least make it toggle-able so I can disable this myself, but others can enable it if it fits their use case.

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[GH-ISSUE #1652] Add a setting to toggle the 15-minutes notification #1153