Notifications quirk

wrh1728 · 2024-10-07 22:29:33

I am running XFCE 4.16 under Slackware 15.0, using Thunderbird as my mail client. Whenever I get an email I get a popup Thunderbird notification about it on my desktop. This notification includes a button labeled Activate. Until recently, when I clicked on that button my Thunderbird client would go to that newly-arrived message, display it in its display area, and mark it as read. As of recently this does not happen any more: clicking on the Activate button in the popup notification does not seem to do anything at all.

I am not aware about any changes to my desktop or Thunderbird, intentional or otherwise. What I am looking for here is pointers to do with things related to XFCE that I should look into to try and diagnose what the problem may be.

eriefisher · 2024-10-07 23:24:29

Under Thunderbird goto edit>>Settings. In the search bar at the top type notification. You should see a button Customize. Check that what you want to see is there. For me when the notification comes up I click Activate and it brings me to Thunderbird with that email in the preview window.

wrh1728 · 2024-10-08 00:06:24

eriefisher wrote:

Under Thunderbird goto edit>>Settings. In the search bar at the top type notification. You should see a button Customize. Check that what you want to see is there. For me when the notification comes up I click Activate and it brings me to Thunderbird with that email in the preview window.

Thanks. When I do that I get a popup window, which I would post here except for the fact that I do not know how to include files with images resident in my system. Anyway, this popup has three boxes, labeled Message Preview Text, Subject and Sender. They are all ticked. There is another box labeled Show New Mail Alert for, its value being 300 seconds.

Now in Thunderbird the Use system notifications box is ticked, which makes me think that the above is overridden - the notification does not stay visible for 300 seconds. The thing is, the XFCE system notifications menus also do not expose anything to do with the Activate button in the notification, as far as I can tell.

eriefisher · 2024-10-08 09:56:25

In your desktop Settings>>Notifications there are some settings as well.

wrh1728 · 2024-10-08 12:46:08

eriefisher wrote:

In your desktop Settings>>Notifications there are some settings as well.

Thanks. Unfortunately, it is a similar deal: the settings offered there are to do with the appearance of the notifications, with applications that are explicitly blocked or enabled, and with notification logs - nothing concerning actions associated with the Activate button, as far as I can tell.

wrh1728 · 2024-10-09 17:16:20

It seems to be something to with KDE Connect.

I am running the KDE Connect 1.32.5 app on two separate phones: a Pixel 4a running Android 12 and a Pixel 7a running Android 14. They are both paired with my Linux desktop, and all the basic functionality seems to be working for both, with a small (but nevertheless irritating) difference:

When I get an email my email client (Thunderbird) in my desktop generates a notification containing the email's sender name and subject line, plus the Activate button. Now when the Pixel 4a phone is on and connected to my desktop, on clicking on that button Thunderbird automatically goes to that newly arrived email, marks it as read, and displays its contents. I observe the same behavior when the KDE Connect daemon is not running in my Linux system. Now when the Pixel 7a phone is on and connected to my Linux system, clicking on the Activate button does not do anything at all: somehow, the KDE Connect connection from this phone inhibits such actions.

I find it a bit unsettling that an external device can do something like that to my XFCE desktop.

eriefisher · 2024-10-09 19:23:06

I don't know anything about KDE Connect but does it show up on the applications list in Notification Setting? It may be intercepting the action desired.

wrh1728 · 2024-10-09 23:35:33

eriefisher wrote:

I don't know anything about KDE Connect but does it show up on the applications list in Notification Setting? It may be intercepting the action desired.

It seems to be something like that. When a phone is paired with KDE Connect on my desktop, the KDE Connect application on my desktop enables by default a bunch of capabilities for the paired phone - e.g. battery monitor, contacts synchronization, filesystem browser, etc. So I decided to disable most of those capabilities in this application, and the problem disappeared as a result. I don't yet know exactly which one (or ones) of those capabilities is the one that messes things up - the checking process is a bit tedious - but I should find out by tomorrow.

Your feedback in this thread is much appreciated though.

Added later 15 h 38 min 54 s:
In case this may be of use to somebody, the Linux KDE Connect setting that is screwing things up for me is Send notifications: when that capability is ticked in the Linux KDE Connect configuration for my paired Android 14 device, the behavior that I described in this thread shows up in my XFCE desktop.

eriefisher · 2024-10-10 15:53:37

This could be an issue with using a KDE/QT app in a GTK system. The notification system is likely different between the two. It's possible you missing a package or library to make it work properly.

Edit:
I just tried to install KDE Connect and it requires 211 new packages. That's not going to happen here.

Last edited by eriefisher (2024-10-10 15:56:02)

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#1 2024-10-07 22:29:33

Notifications quirk

#2 2024-10-07 23:24:29

Re: Notifications quirk

#3 2024-10-08 00:06:24

Re: Notifications quirk

#4 2024-10-08 09:56:25

Re: Notifications quirk

#5 2024-10-08 12:46:08

Re: Notifications quirk

#6 2024-10-09 17:16:20

Re: Notifications quirk

#7 2024-10-09 19:23:06

Re: Notifications quirk

#8 2024-10-09 23:35:33

Re: Notifications quirk

#9 2024-10-10 15:53:37

Re: Notifications quirk

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