Should still show notifications when phone is locked

[Michael Terry]

Why does ubuntu-push treat its messages differently than SMS messages?

- If receiving an SMS message while locked, the screen is turned on and the notification is shown above the greeter as well as in the indicator.

- When receiving a push message while locked (today), the screen is left off, no notification is shown above the greeter, but the indicator does still show the message.

Why the difference? There is actually explicit code for this behavior in client/service/postal.go:

 if output.Notification.Card != nil && output.Notification.Card.Popup {
  if svc.unityGreeter.IsActive() {
   // Screen is locked, ensure popup is false
   output.Notification.Card.Popup = false
  }
 }

I would have assumed that that block would not exist at all.

I could imagine an argument for some push messages being more "sensitive" than others. But surely some aren't more sensitive than SMS. For example, Telegram. It should be treated identically I would think. So rather than a blanket "no push messages show a notification", we'd add something to the push protocol that says whether the message is sensitive (if indeed that's the reason for this code).

As for turning the screen on, hopefully you don't have to bother explicitly doing that once a unity8 branch lands that automatically does it when displaying a notification [1]. You'd just have to stop setting popup=false.

[1] https://code.launchpad.net/~mterry/unity8/turn-on-screen-when-notifying/+merge/267592

[Oliver Grawert (ogra)]

we have a privacy setting that en/disables indicators and the launcher on the lock screen. while this is enabled you can see the whole notification backlog in the messaging indicator anyway. IMHO the notification handling should simply be bound to this privacy setting (it doesn't make sense to suppress notifications if you can read the message in the indicator even with the screen locked)

[Michael Terry (mterry)]

Agreed ogra.

And I'd argue that the logic to check how indicators/notifications are configured should probably be in the upper layer that shows the notifications, not the push daemon itself. I think it should just push its messages out via libnotify and leave policy to other pieces of the system.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.