Hide Ubuntu One notification popups

[Nicolas Galler]

It is currently not possible to hide the "Ubuntu One is updating your files" and "Ubuntu One finished updating your files" notification popups via the configuration. I can hide the icon in the preferences but the popups are still showing, they are rather big and disruptive, and with certain types of files (e.g. IM logs, OpenOffice locks) they occur almost continously.

I have added an option for it on my local copy - I will try and submit a patch for it.

[tz (thomas-mich)]

This might be a duplicate of 452285.

In any case if the tray icon is there it should indicate updating/completed and not popping up a billion "updating". It should do at most one starting and one complete. But even those are excessive if you do something (think building from source or unpacking an archive) inside the ubuntu one directory.

[Nicolas Galler (ngaller)]

Yep the problem (with me) is when I am editing a file such as an OpenOffice document, it saves a small recovery file every 30 seconds or so. So I get the "Updating... Updating finished" popups almost continuously as the file keeps getting updated.

[Nicolas Galler (ngaller)]

I think you may be misunderstanding the problem.

The applet correctly sends the notifications when files are being updated. Some files are updating more often than others - that is to be expected. There could be some sort of rate limit for efficiency purposes but that is a different issue.

The issue here is I do not care to be actively notified that UbuntuOne is updating my files, or done updating my files. Not every 30 seconds, not every 5 minutes, not once a day, not ever. If I really want to see the status, I can click on the applet and get it.

[dobey (dobey)]

Your previous comment stated it was a duplicate (and your issue was that you get the notifications continually). Hence, I marked it a duplicate. But if you're issue is rather that you just want to disable all notifications, I would rather understand your use case, so that we can fit it in appropriately, while fixing the other issue the proper way, rather than simply giving everyone a blanket to cover it with.

Do you ever want to notified by ANY applications at all? If so, what are your criteria for wanting to see notifications? If not, wouldn't the better solution be to simply remove notify-osd (which isn't really feasible in Karmic at the moment, due to some incorrect dependencies on it, but which I am also filing and fixing).

[Nicolas Galler (ngaller)]

My bad, I see how it was confusing from my previous comment.

I do generally want to see notifications e.g. for emails or IMs, I think there is still interest in seeing some "critical" notifications from the ubuntuone applet as well (eg connection errors, maybe conflicts)

[dobey (dobey)]

I've subscribed John Lea from our design team to help with this. As I said the notifications were designed to avoid being annoying (and in this case that fails, and I think hiding them always is the wrong solution). We should be able to get more design feedback tomorrow, and get this resolved (but it may not be backportable to a Karmic update).

[John Lea (johnlea)]

Hi, to answer you question:

Ubuntu One should not issue notifications in direct response the user's own actions. If a user has just saved a file, they don't need to be told that the file is synced. If the file fails to sync the user should be alerted to the error however this is a separate discussion.

(Note: Ideally notifications should be issued when another user updates a file that the current user has access to (both when they have shared the file and when the file is shared with them). This is a means by which the user can receive situational awareness of other users interactions with data that falls within his or her scope. This is functionality is one element of a possible events framework that is not currently in scope)

[Nicolas Galler (ngaller)]

Thank you! So if I save a file and get an "Updating" notification, is it indeed a bug? Should I open as a separate bug report (or possibly add to 452285)?

[John Lea (johnlea)]

Yes, notifications should not be displayed at all in response to successful synchronisation. Bug 452285 seems to be a duplicate of this bug.

[dobey (dobey)]

On Thu, 2009-11-26 at 09:38 +0000, John Lea wrote:
> Yes, notifications should not be displayed at all in response to
> successful synchronisation. Bug 452285 seems to be a duplicate of this
> bug.

That is not a duplicate. It is a separate issue of getting too many
notifications.

Also, if one saves/puts a very large file in U1, should not there be a
notification that it has finished uploading? This is also the same if
the user inserts lots of smaller files. Should not the user be notified
when things are done? Larger files or lots of files adding up to the
same size, may take several minutes or hours to upload. It would be
unfair to the user to have them believe that such things are immediately
available everywhere else, which the lack of notification may imply.

[dobey (dobey)]

On Wed, 2009-11-25 at 18:08 +0000, Nicolas Galler wrote:
> Thank you! So if I save a file and get an "Updating" notification, is
> it indeed a bug? Should I open as a separate bug report (or possibly
> add to 452285)?

I think your issue is a separate one. And I am not sure you need another
report for it. The issue in the above report is that we are somehow
continually synchronizing things, but everything isn't getting
synchronized in one go, so it keeps getting done/starting/done/etc...
signals from the syncdaemon, and the applet doesn't know that the
syncdaemon is being slow to upload some things. It's more of a
latency/timeout issue, while your's is more of a direct interaction
issue.

[DavidHoenig (davidhoenig)]

I have this same issue. I keep many scripts in my "Ubuntu One" directory and every time I open one with vim I get two notifications (1. Ubuntu One is updating your files. 2. Ubuntu One finished updating your files) and then again every time I save the file. This is distracting because I think it is an incoming IM or email. I understand that UO client is correctly noticing a change in the files and doing an update, but I really don't care that the update is starting or finishing. In fact, I think if the client was silent it would actually improve the user experience because it would feel more seamless. I would only want to see notifications one client errors.

I would like to see an option in ubuntuone-client-preferences for something like:

show notifications when updating files [ ]

The developers might be able to look at all the notifications that could occur and put them into buckets like non-critical notifications, warnings, and errors.