Forums

Discuss all things Remember The Milk.

menu

Push notifications not working

emorich says:
I upgraded to a Pro account a few days ago on Android Pie. Since then I haven't gotten any push notifications at all from the app.

I've tested:
-Test tasks with due dates, start dates, location based, and time based reminders (EG: 5 minutes)
-Test tasks made with the widget, the app, and the web app.
-Checking that notifications were enabled
-Reinstalling the app
-Checking every setting in the app that I can find

Anyone else having this problem and is there any fix? I feel like I just wasted $40 because the app is completely useless right now.
Posted at 1:20pm on September 6, 2018
andrewski (Remember The Milk) says:
Hi emorich,
Thanks for getting in touch and reporting this issue. Sorry to hear about that!

You may wish to review the Reminders settings in the app to make sure the reminders are enabled there. The on/off setting is there, and the timings are set in the web/desktop app.

You may also want to make sure that your app is still set for background operation, and that your device hasn't reset any power/battery options. The app requires background operation to issue the reminder notifications.

If this keeps up, would it be possible to contact us through the app or on our web form with a screenshot of each set of settings? Thanks!
Posted 5 years ago
emorich says:
Tried all of that and nothing... I sent in a web form
Posted 5 years ago
martingchapman says:
@emorich
September last year (2018) I changed my phone from Android 6 to Android 7 and had similar problems to you.
Notifications became erratic then stopped altogether (although they still worked fine on my tablet running Android 5).

I escalated to RTM Support on 27/9/18 and had an ongoing dialogue with them, trying all sorts of tests etc but to no avail.
I then upgraded my phone to Android 8 and notifications started working again, but shortly they became erratic and stopped again.
I continued a dialogue with RTM Support until 16/4/19 when they agreed it was a bug and would be fixed in a later release of the App.
Still waiting!

Push notifications on my phone are essential to me so I have given up on RTM and moved to Toodledo, but the Toodledo Android App has the same problems with notifications so I use the "Ultimate todo List" (UtL) Android App (synced to Toodledo) which is rock solid and never misses a notification.

In my opinion Toodledo with UtL is currently the best Web/Android Task Management solution.

Both RTM and Toodledo are primarily Web based services and seem to struggle with Android Apps whereas UtL only do the Android App so they can focus on keeping it up to date with the constantly evolving Android platform.

I would be very interested to hear if you manage to resolve this with RTM so please keep this thread updated.

Martin.
Posted 5 years ago
martingchapman says:
Sorry about the dates in the above post, of course last year was 2017 and this 2018, just getting ahead of myself??
Posted 5 years ago
andrewski (Remember The Milk) says:
Hi Martin,
Sorry we haven't had an update on your issue. We're happy to get in touch again about that; I can check in with the development team on your issue.

emorich mentioned by email that their notifications started working again, so it sounds like something specific may be affecting them on their device, which is similar to our conversation about your issue as well. Sorry again for the inconvenience!

One thing to keep in mind is that Android reminder notifications are issued locally from the app, not pushed, so aside from a sync issue preventing a new task from syncing to the device everything that would affect the reminders would be on the device. (Not to say it wouldn't be the fault of the app, but this is not something we're generally able to reproduce in these cases, which is why they're so tricky to track down!)
Posted 5 years ago
martingchapman says:
@andrewski
Thanks for the reply.
The loss of notifications when I upgraded my phone was the last straw for me with RTM.

I really like RTM and it has all the features I need in a task manager
except
1. a reliable Chrome/Gmail extension that enables the easy adding of a task to RTM with the url of the page automatically entered into the url field of the task
2. reliable notifications on Android

Item 1 has been a issue with RTM for many years, a problem that you have not only consistently failed to address but also seem reluctant to ever address properly as it just goes on and on.
Whilst I could just about live with item 1 (by using a workaround that sort of gave me the features I wanted) when the Android notifications stopped and RTM were unable to fix it, I lost confidence in RTM and felt I had no option but to look elsewhere for a task manager.

If RTM ever decides to introduce a proper, reliable Chrome/Gmail extension, and you manage to fix the notification problem on Android then I would seriously consider coming back to RTM.

But for the moment I will stick with Toodledo/UTL as this combination does provide all that I need in a task manager.


Posted 5 years ago
martingchapman says:
October 2018 update
Following the last major RTM Android App update notifications have started appearing on my phone again.
At the moment they seem to be ok, although in the past they did work for a while and then stop.
I will monitor and see what happens.

All I need now to come back to RTM is a reliable Chrome/Gmail extension that enables the easy adding of a task to RTM from a web page or Gmail, with the title of the page/Gmail automatically entered into the title of the task and the url of the page/Gmail automatically entered into the url field of the task.

@andreski
Are you ever going to provide this feature?
Posted 5 years ago
andrewski (Remember The Milk) says:
Hi martingchapman,
Very glad to hear that your notifications are working better now! We'd love to hear if anything changes there. (Feel free to reply to our prior email conversation.)

We don't have any other announcements at this time, but we'd love to know if there are any changes or updates about notifications in the Android app, either anything ongoing or any changes in the 4.3.x updates.
Posted 5 years ago
martingchapman says:
One thing about notifications, they do not clear on the phone if the corresponding task is completed on the web.
Having marked a task completed on the web, the notification persists on the phone until I dismiss it on the phone.

@andrewwski
Is this a bug or design intent?
Posted 5 years ago
andrewski (Remember The Milk) says:
Hi martingchapman,
Yes, currently notifications do not sync between the tasks and reminders. The reminders are currently pushed out as a one-way notification.

Thanks for your feedback that you'd like them to sync up. I've passed that along to the development team for review, and you can submit that in the Ideas forum too if you'd like.
Posted 5 years ago
martingchapman says:
@andrewski
Thanks for clarifying the operation of this feature.
Posted 5 years ago
This topic has now been closed automatically due to a lack of responses in the past 90 days.