Confused About Notifications With Default Messaging App.

ElmosCat

I am having a lot of confusion trying to configure the notifications on the default messaging app. I am using a Pixel 9 with GrapheneOS v2025120401 and v12 of the default Messaging app. The phone is configured with an Owner user profile and a secondary user profile called "Main".

The Owner profile is a passive profile. Google Play Store and Google Play Services are installed in this profile. I only use this profile to download apps from the Play Store and then push them to the Main profile. Once apps have been downloaded from Google Play Store both the Google Play Store and Google Play Services are disable in the profile. Additionally, the apps that have been downloaded into the Owner profile are also disabled.

The Main Profile is where the apps are are used. Neither Google Play Store nor Google Play Services is installed in this profile. These following are the issues I am experiencing with notifications from the default messaging app in this profile:

When I do receive a notification from the messaging app it might take up to 2 minutes for the message to actually arrive in the app.
Notifications are inconsistent. Sometimes I receive notifications (either a sound or dot) but other times I do not.

My notification settings are:

Settings->Notifications->Manage->App Notifications->Messaging: Enabled
Settings->Notifications->App Notifications->Messaging->Conversations: Has a list of conversations from the messaging app that show "Incoming messages"
Settings->Notifications->Manage->Conversation->Conversations: No Priority Conversations
Settings->Apps>Messaging->Notifications->Conversations: Has a list of conversations from the messaging app that show "Incoming messages"
Settings->Apps>Messaging->Notifications->Notification Categories->Other->Incoming Messages: Enabled/Default, Pop on Screen and Show Notification Dot are enabled.

I have no idea how any conversations were added to this setting: Settings->Notifications->App Notifications->Messaging->Conversations: Has a list of conversations from the messaging app that show "Incoming messages". I did not enable the notifications for these conversations. There are literally hundreds of conversations in the messaging app. I don't appear to be missing notifications from the conversations that have this setting enabled. I would think that the default when starting a new conversation it would be that receiving notifications for the conversation would be enabled. I can't imagine it would be expected that I would have to go and enable this setting manually for hundreds of conversations. Is there a global setting that I missed?

Additionally, some of the conversations that don't have the above setting enabled still always provide me with a notification. And other conversations sometimes do, and at other times do not, provide me with notification. I have tried shutting off the notification for some of the enabled conversations and I continue to receive notifications from those conversations.

I am very confused at this point. I realize that the notifications for the Messaging was completely overhauled a while back. At this point in time I don't know what each setting does and what takes precedent over the other. Can someone please hep me understand how this works?

starglider

I don't have your problem exactly, but I hit a somewhat related issue (https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/28833-setting-default-sms-app-notification-preferences). As far as I can tell, the messaging app creates a new notification channel for every single sender. It makes it really hard to navigate the notification settings.

I've never had the delay you're referencing, although I don't run it cross-profile, so that might explain it. I do have the default problem you're mentioning. It seems like the default notification preferences are hardcoded in the app, and that what seems like "generic" new message notification doesn't actually do anything, because each incoming message is its own channel.

Different from you, though, when I do change the notifications for a specific chat, that does work. I just can't change preferences for brand-new senders.

I think it's just a much older app existing on newer versions of Android and not quite working as expected. Going cross-profile with it probably doesn't help, since that tends to surface app bugs. Maybe try not disabling Messages in the Owner profile? Just a thought.

gristle-cause

Interprofile SMS wonkiness is a known issue. I've seen it discussed in here more than once before. I don't think there's a solution yet

MetropleX

It is indeed an upstream issue.

Our position on cellular non data communications:

Legacy calls and texts should be avoided as they're not secure and trust the carrier / network along with having weak security against other parties.

Source: https://grapheneos.org/faq#cellular-tracking

I do appreciate that too many organisations still use them for various purposes inclusive of 2FA. You can try clearing the storage of the messaging app in the afflicted user profile and reboot your device to see if this helps, it's particularly worth doing when a backup has been restored to a secondary user which is also known to cause SMS related issues such as showing the wrong contact with the wrong conversation etc.