Delayed notifications
Constantin B
Even though I find this application very useful, its real‑world performance is unfortunately disastrous. If a notification arrives several hours late, it becomes completely useless to me. Even worse, I sometimes receive notifications in the middle of the night while I am asleep. I cannot understand why this happens. My internet connection is always active, so there is no reason for such delays.
Suggestion for the developer: once the application successfully connects to the email inbox and detects previously unreported messages, if more than one hour has passed — or more than x minutes, according to my own setting — the notification should no longer be delivered, as it is no longer relevant. This would allow me to rest properly at night.
Another issue: I am trying to determine whether my application is outdated and needs an upgrade. I am not sure where to check this. It displays version 5.0, yet the description refers to 4.145. Is my application fully up to date?
I look forward to your reply.
Constantin
MaxlabMobile Support
Hi Constantin,
Thank you for taking the time to share such detailed feedback. I’m sorry to hear you’ve been experiencing delayed notifications, must be really inconveniencing.
I’d like to better understand what’s happening so we can determine the cause:
- Which email provider are you using (Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo, or another)?
- Approximately how many hours late do the notifications usually arrive?
- Does this happen consistently, or only occasionally?
- Are you using any battery optimization or power-saving features on your phone that might restrict background activity?
- Does the app remain signed-in all the time, or do you occasionally need to reconnect your email account?
Regarding the notification suggestion, that’s a thoughtful idea. Suppressing notifications that are older than a user-defined threshold could prevent irrelevant alerts, especially overnight. I’ll take note of this as a potential improvement.
As for the version number, the version shown in the app (5.0) is the current major version. The number you see in the description (4.145) refers to an older internal release/build and is outdated information in the store listing. If your app shows version 5.0, then you are running the latest major release.
In the meantime, the delayed notifications are most commonly caused by Android restricting background activity or delaying network access while the device is idle. If possible, please check that battery optimization is disabled for the app and that it is allowed to run in the background. Let me know your phone model and Android version as well, since some manufacturers apply more aggressive battery management than others.
I look forward to your answers so we can investigate this further.
Best regards,
Jim
Constantin B
Which email provider are you using (Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo, or another)? AOL.com
Approximately how many hours late do the notifications usually arrive? Last night, the notification arrived roughly seven hours late. To make sure it wasn’t just an error, I opened my inbox and checked the exact arrival time of the email. If the email itself is delayed, that could also be a contributing factor. The message reached my inbox around 14.xx, while the notification appeared on my phone only around 22.xx. Observation: I’m not sure whether this was a coincidence, but exactly when I logged into the web interface, another delayed notification appeared. This detail might be helpful.
Does this happen consistently, or only occasionally? There are days when everything works flawlessly, but yesterday was not one of them.
Are you using any battery optimization or power-saving features on your phone that might restrict background activity? I’m not using any battery optimization features. My phone is a standard Galaxy A25.
Does the app remain signed-in all the time, or do you occasionally need to reconnect your email account? I use the app intensively only two months a year, during summer. For the rest of the year I don’t need notifications. During this period, I’ve noticed that the app sometimes stops on its own. Since I don’t use it continuously, I don’t immediately notice when it disconnects.
In short: I monitor a process using an ESP32. It cannot send notifications directly to my phone, and this is where your app becomes essential. The ESP32 sends an email to AOL, the app detects the incoming message, and forwards the subject line to my phone — which is the information I need. As long as there are no delays, the system works perfectly. You might consider creating a dedicated platform where users or smart devices can send key messages using a username and password: “the door has been opened”, “the room temperature is … °C”, “it has started raining”, etc. The app could read these newly arrived messages and deliver them as real‑time notifications to the user’s phone.
Constantin