Notifications and browser push

EveSynapse tells you when something happens to your characters: a skill finishes, new mail, a new in-game calendar event, a new op planned for one of your corporations, a reminder before an op you signed up to starts, a new killmail, planetary extractors stopping, an industry job finishing, and watch list alerts.

They show under the bell in the top bar with no setup at all. Under bell, then Settings, each kind can be switched off altogether, or for some of your characters. A character linked later starts with everything on.

Timing

• Notifications are worked out after each background sync, so one arrives some minutes after the thing happened in game.
• How soon depends on whether anyone has the site open, from every minute for a character somebody is looking at, to every 2 hours for a week-idle account with no push subscription and no Discord linked. Things that come with the clock (a skill or a job finishing, an extractor running out) are checked at least every 5 minutes for everyone, and new ops and op reminders every minute.
• The first sync of a character only records what is already there. Mail that was in the inbox before then is not announced, and neither is mail already read, or mail a character sends to itself.
• When more than three things happen at once, push sends a single message with a count instead of one each.

Install it as an app

The site can be installed to a phone's home screen or a computer's desktop, where it opens in its own window with its own icon.

• Chrome and Edge: an Install app link appears at the foot of the menu once the browser says the site can be installed. It is not there if the app is already installed.
• Android: install from Chrome. An app installed from Samsung Internet has been seen never to ask for notification permission, so push cannot be turned on in it.
• iPhone and iPad: Safari gives a page no way to offer this. Use Share, then Add to Home Screen; push only works from the installed app there.
• Firefox: installs on desktop with working notifications; on Android it is in the browser's menu.

The Android app

The repository's android/ is an Android app that opens the site full screen: a Trusted Web Activity. It has no code of its own and runs in the phone's browser, so sign-ins, push, and everything else behave as they do there. It exists for people who would rather install an app than use Add to Home Screen, and so the site can be put on Google Play.

The pipeline's android job builds it: run it by hand from the project's pipelines page and download evesynapse-android from the job's artifacts. With no signing key it makes a debug build that shows the browser's address bar. With a signing key it makes a release .apk (to install directly) and .aab (for Google Play). The README's Android section has the key setup steps; the site's .env then names the app with ANDROID_APP_PACKAGE and ANDROID_APP_FINGERPRINTS, and /.well-known/assetlinks.json vouches for it so the app opens without the address bar.

Turn push on for the server (once, operator)

1. Make a key pair on the server:

   evesynapse -push-keys
   

   It prints three lines starting VAPID_PUBLIC_KEY=, VAPID_PRIVATE_KEY=, and VAPID_SUBJECT=. Nothing is saved anywhere; the lines are only printed.

2. Paste those three lines into the server's .env, and change VAPID_SUBJECT to an address you can be reached at, such as mailto:[email protected].

3. Restart: sudo systemctl restart evesynapse.

Keep the private key secret, and do not replace the pair later: every browser that switched push on would have to do it again. The site has to be served over https (see Installation).

Turn push on in a browser (each browser, each device)

1. Sign in, click the bell, then Settings.
2. Under Browser notifications, click Turn on in this browser, and choose Allow when the browser asks.
3. Click Send a test. A notification reading "Browser notifications are working." should appear within a few seconds.

On iPhone or iPad, first add EveSynapse to the Home Screen and do these steps in the app that opens from there; Safari does not offer push to an ordinary tab.

If it does not work

• "Browser notifications are not set up on this server." The server did not find a usable key pair. Check the three lines are in the .env the service reads, and that it was restarted.
• "This browser cannot receive push notifications." The browser has no push support. On iOS, open the installed app, not a Safari tab.
• "Notifications from this site are blocked in this browser." Permission was refused earlier. Allow notifications for the site in the browser's site settings, then reload.
• The test says sent, but nothing appears. The operating system is hiding it: check its notification settings for the browser, and Do Not Disturb or Focus.

The README's Notifications section carries the full table, including the push-service cases.