gsurrel / facebooknotifications

Small Android app for getting notified (friends, messages and notifications) while being privacy-friendly

Notifications for Facebook

Small Android app for getting notified (friends, messages and notifications) while being privacy and battery friendly. It doesn't require the Facebook Platform to be turned on. It plays nicely with SlimSocial for Facebook.

Direct link to release .apk file and link to debug .apk file.

Changelog

• 1.10.1

  • Upgrade API level for the Play Store to be happy
  • Add link to DontKillMyApp
  • Ask runtime permission to draw over other apps

• 1.10.0

  • Added shortcut to logout
  • Added quit button
  • Added a "Open in browser" button

• 1.9.2

  • Fixed a crash on wrong user input

• 1.9.1

  • Hopefully fixed issues #19 & #21

• 1.9.0 thanks to @hirvinen

  • Fixed issues #18 & #20
  • Cleaned and refactored code
  • Added possibility to share the current page

• 1.8.0

  • Fixed custom vibration pattern bug
  • Added custom blinking pattern per category
  • Updated sdk build-tools used

• 1.7.0

  • Added compatibility to older devices

• 1.6.5

  • Added vibration control
  • Settings panel disabled irrelevant features

• 1.6.3

  • Made app Play Store compliant

• 1.6.2

  • Custom update time added in the settings

• 1.6.1

  • Simplified preferences page, allowing to disable sound notification by selecting the "None" sound

• 1.6.0

  • Added sound notification
  • Enable/disable notifications per type
  • Support back button while browsing

• 1.5.x

  • Removed support library without API level regression
  • F-Droid integration
  • Not pausing current activity when updating
  • Can be used as a browser for Facebook. Not fully featured!
  • Better code construct
  • Unified notification type using "Big View" and direct access buttons
  • Remembers the notification count so it does not bother the user every 5 minutes
  • Using notification LED

• 1.0.0

  • Initial release

facebooknotifications's Issues

Keep versioncode updated

Note that you "released" different versions with the same versioncode of 1. The VC is an integer that is used to check if an apk is an update to an app or not. Please bump the VC when you release new versions. See https://developer.android.com/tools/publishing/versioning.html.

Option to show that there are no notifications waiting at all

When using rarely Facebook, it can be nice to see that there are no notifications pending at all. Maybe in a low-priority flag so it's down the list.

Support the "back" button

Currently, back button quits the app instead of going back to previos page if there is one.

Add LED Blink Rate Customization

I have run into a problem using this app. If I get a few important notifications from messaging apps with a high LED notification blink rate but then the most recent notification I got was from Notifications for Facebook then the blink rate is overridden and becomes slow even though I have important messages from before. I need to quickly glance at my phone to check for messages but with such a slow blink rate it is easy to miss!

Can you please add blink rate customization? While you are at it an LED color choice would be great too!

Thank you!

Display the number of pending notifications on the status bar

It would be nice if the icon shows the total number of pending things

Regarding user agent

Hello, this looks like an awesome app, thank you very much.
Just one little question. Since my default user agent shows device and build info and this app gets facebook notifications from m.facebook.com, I'm wondering if it uses the same UA string as my browser. There are some user agent switchers on the Play Store but they are just for Chrome, so I don't know what else to do other than ask if you can shed some light about it. I really want to hide my device info from UA string. Can you edit it to show some common UA string instead? Thank you mate.

Add a homescreen widget

I've been using the app for years, because it's lightweight and does its notification function, but I think you should add a home screen widget to make it great. The most similar thing years ago, was this app, which I used together and its functionality was very good, only that it stopped working due to changes on the facebook api:

https://www.androidlista.com/item/android-apps/3689/notifier-widget-for-facebook/

Please follow my advice and keep improving the app, it has an enormous potential because nowadays there are no other apps with the same concept

When messages are waiting, try to find out from where they come from

Check carefully m.facebook.com and see if we can have the names of the updated conversations without marking the thread as "seen" (and not "read" either)

Possibility to make the notification persistent with a "Refresh button"

It might be hell to implement, though :)

Compilation to "release" strips-off some parts of the code?

I am not 100% sure but I feel like I’m missing something: the release apk doesn’t seem to work and the debug one yes. Maybe this interface is stripped out because it’s seen by Android Studio as unused (and it’s not the case)?

Decrease minSdk?

i am editing the code, shall i decrease the minSdk.
why is that 17?
is not 14 enough?

Add button to share current url on Facebook via app itself

Sometimes when I follow a link out of Facebook, within the app, I might follow another link, which I'd like to share on FB. This could be easily be done by adding a menu item that loads https://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u= in the webView.

Please add a way to open links in a browser

I sometimes get links on Facebook and I want to be able to bookmark them or send them to other people.

Can you please add a "Open in web broser" button?

Thank you

Ask to disable energy savings for Android 6+

can't zoom on event description

when viewing a fb event, the text goes beyond the visible area; you have to scroll right then back left to keep reading. rotation of the screen only makes the text bigger.

INVALID

Option to forcefully show the current number of notifications

Currently, the app notifies only for changes in the number of notifications. It can be useful in certain circumstances to always show the number of pending notifications.

Missing root project

It looks like you versioned the "app" folder, but not the whole project. There should be a ../build.gradle and ../settings.gradle on your local machine that are not part of the repo.

Add Tor support

Can you add proxy support to handle the tor address for facebook when orbot is enabled? Like that proxy feature in tinfoil. So far https://m.facebookcorewwwi.onion/ works like a charm and doesn't raise warnings when Tor switchs exitNodes and ip is changed. It would be a nice addition. Thank you very much.

Simplify preferences screen

Is there the option of having "no sound" in the sound selector for notifications? If so, it's redundant with the option of enabling/disabling the sound. (I have it on mine but I don't know if it's stock Android)

[Request] Filter notifications by type

I'm a big fan of this app, but one thing I miss is being able to hide notifications for new messages.

Is this something you would consider adding whenever possible?

Changing Orientation Causes the Page to Reload

If I am in the middle of writing a message then switch from portrait to landscape orientation then the page reloads completely and I not only lose what I was typing but I have to then find my friend again to start a new message.

Why does an orientation switch cause a total reload? This isn't how most apps work.

Req: notification for message requests

Is there any way to get notifications for message requests? I can't find any app on this planet which provides this and it's making me tear my hair out!

Allow alternate upload types in messages

Currently you are only able to upload JPG to attach to messages. This should be expanded to include videos and files

Choose version of Facebook site?

How about allowing user to choose which version of the Facebook site is shown? Full version probably wouldn't make sense, except maybe on a tablet, but touch.facebook.com offers some advantages over m.facebook.com in terms of UX. Then again it would require javascript to be enabled, but that could be disabled again when navigating outside of facebook.

Lighterweight page found to load

This page https://m.facebook.com/notes/?id=0&about can be loaded as it's even smaller and we don't lose information (~3kB where most of it is the request header).

Alternatively, we can consider using touch.facebook.com along with shouldOverrideUrlLoading from the WebViewClient but it's much bigger. It can maybe give more insights to build informationful notifications.

[Request] Change update timing

It could be nice to be able to change the update frequency rather than have the fixed-time 5 minutes interval.

Add diagnosis data

In the settings menu, add a way to reach debug info:

• Wakeup time
• Data fetched
• Parsed data fetched
• Wakeup duration

Pauses YouTube and games when updating

The app starts a new (hidden) activity which pauses/stops the currently used app. Any ideas to keep the sync in background?

[Request] Notification sound

How about adding an option:

• no sound
• default notification
• custom sound

Handle better the notification update when several categories are present

Let's not open the website directly but update the notification counts just before opening the website so it prevents re-notifying immediately after checking. Delaying the next check is probably worth doing.

NullPointerException on menu tap under certain circumstances

Maybe it's when the page hasn't been fully loaded yet.

java.lang.NullPointerException: 
  at android.net.Uri$StringUri.<init>(Uri.java:476)
  at android.net.Uri$StringUri.<init>(Uri.java:466)
  at android.net.Uri.parse(Uri.java:438)
  at org.surrel.facebooknotifications.MainActivity.onOptionsItemSelected(MainActivity.java:222)
  at android.app.Activity.onMenuItemSelected(Activity.java:3205)
  at com.android.internal.policy.PhoneWindow.onMenuItemSelected(PhoneWindow.java:1244)
  at com.android.internal.view.menu.MenuBuilder.dispatchMenuItemSelected(MenuBuilder.java:801)
  at com.android.internal.view.menu.MenuItemImpl.invoke(MenuItemImpl.java:155)
  at com.android.internal.view.menu.MenuBuilder.performItemAction(MenuBuilder.java:954)
  at com.android.internal.view.menu.MenuBuilder.performItemAction(MenuBuilder.java:944)
  at android.widget.ActionMenuView.invokeItem(ActionMenuView.java:658)
  at com.android.internal.view.menu.ActionMenuItemView$1.run(ActionMenuItemView.java:250)
  at android.os.Handler.handleCallback(Handler.java:739)
  at android.os.Handler.dispatchMessage(Handler.java:95)
  at android.os.Looper.loop(Looper.java:158)
  at android.app.ActivityThread.main(ActivityThread.java:7230)
  at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Native Method:0)
  at com.android.internal.os.ZygoteInit$MethodAndArgsCaller.run(ZygoteInit.java:1230)
  at com.android.internal.os.ZygoteInit.main(ZygoteInit.java:1120)

Messaging no longer supported

Likely due to a change in API, messaging through third party apps no longer works AFAIK.

Some happened with Slim Socialand Frost.

disable synchronization not working

I disabled synchronization in the settings menu because it was behaving weirdly, but it seems to have no effect. It is still notifying me of new messages.

Rebooting didnt help.

Pictures attachments

Hi, I'm unable to add picture attachments in messages. can you please work this out

allow disabling vibration

I only put vibrate on calls so it would be good to be able to disable vibration on this as well.