Email notifications, the Discourse App, and PushOver

Product Support

AI-generated summary

GeoffSchultz is confused about how email, the Discourse app, and PushOver notifications interact, particularly regarding their iOS setup. They receive email notifications as expected but haven’t received any PushOver notifications despite configuration. They also question whether push notifications received on their iPhone originate from the app itself or PushOver. Their primary goal is to configure notifications to come solely through the app, avoiding email notifications. NateDhaliwal believes the push notifications are coming directly from the Discourse app, as they receive them on Android without PushOver configured, and suggests setting all email preferences to ‘never’ in /my/preferences/emails. After extensive testing, GeoffSchultz found that email notifications function as expected, notification levels must be set for app activity to be displayed, the iOS app inconsistently generates push notifications or icon updates, appears to lack background refresh, and PushOver remains inactive.

1

At this point, I must admit that I have myself very confused as how notifications work when using email, the Discourse app, and how PushOver interacts with all of this.

Right now I am “tracking” posts on a forum that I host. I get email notifications as expected.

I have a PushOver account which I have configured to issue push notifications (I think), but have never received any notifications via their app.

I also am using the Discourse app on ios. I get push notifications on my iPhone when someone posts something to the forum, but I’m not sure if that’s coming directly from the app or if PushOver is somehow involved. Can someone clarify that for me?

And finally, if someone is running the app, is it possible to configure the notifications to be purely through the app such that they don’t get the emails notifications?

2

I believe those push notifications are coming from the Discourse app. On Android, I have it (the app) installed, and get push notifications, even though I don’t have PushOver set up.

Under /my/preferences/emails, you can set everything to ‘never’, and the mobile app should probably still send notifications.

3

After running a lot of experiments, here’s what I have determined:

  • Email notifications work as described and expected
  • You have to set a notification level (i.e. Watching, Tracking, etc) to have the Discourse app display that activity has taken place
  • The iOS app occasionally generates a push notification, but most of the time doesn’t
  • The iOS app occasionally displays that activity has taken place by changing it’s icon
  • The iOS app doesn’t seem to do background refresh (even though allowed) and running. I have to open the app to get it to update.
  • PushOver doesn’t seem to do anything