Vincent Ritter

Gluon - Experimental Local Push Notifications Update

I spent Friday writing the code to enable local push notifications and the weekend to see how well it worked. Whilst results vary depending on the device and the amount of times you use the app, it has been pretty solid and I’m super happy with these early results.

Here is a fun look at the things I do:

I pushed out a notification every single time I did a “background” update, so I would know if it would run the job in the background. Certain to say it did just that. I had hundreds.

The interesting thing is that I set a 30 minute interval for the background check, which on my main device turned out to be every 10 minutes. I presume this has to do with the “blackbox” code that Apple use to determine how often you use the app amongst other things . So the more you use it, the more frequently it checks (although I think 10 mins is the lowest it goes). For example my test device, the other iPhone, was running this every 1 - 3 hours, instead of every 10 minutes or 30. This is totally fine with me and is actually much better than an “instant” notification because it takes into account how much you use the app. Love that.

This morning, I turned on my phone, put it out of Airplane mode, walked to the shop and:

Very cool! It took roughly 30 mins after I turned the phone on, but that was totally fine with me. I don’t need anything real time.

In terms of battery life… I haven’t noticed anything that causes me to pull the feature in horror. Seems to be same as before.

TestFlight

Saying this, it still needs testing is not by any means finished yet. However, I will push this out in an update for everyone to try out. As I said, results will vary.

There is a small bug where you may launch the app and be presented with a login screen, I do believe I fixed that though. If it does happen… for now… just force close the app and launch it again (yup, I just said that). The joys of Alpha/Beta versions. More a beta than an alpha atm.

To enable notifications, just head to the “Mentions” tab and select the option at the top. I’ll be moving this to settings at some stage.

Anyway, I would love to have feedback from everyone that is giving it a try. Ideally I’d like to know how reliable it is. Personally it works pretty great and I don’t have a need for real time updates.

Also note that tapping on the notification doesn’t actually take you to the mention just yet. The mentions feed should be updated though.

This week

This week will be a little slower on the Gluon development front as I’m catching up with client work.

The main areas I want to concentrate on until the end of the month are:

  • Posting to a micro.blog hosted blog
  • Picture viewer
  • Personal profile view

Anyway, Happy Monday and I hope you enjoy this update.

Stay in the loop

Subscribe to the RSS feed...