1500135 - Action Center (Notification Center) notifications on Windows 10 are delayed sometimes by hours

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Toolkit Graveyard :: Notifications and Alerts, defect, P2)

Description

[Jared Wein [:jaws] (please needinfo? me)]

Since bug 1155505 switch to using Action Center for displaying notifications, I am now only seeing notifications multiple hours after they should have been displayed.

This appears to be a long running bug with Windows 10 that has yet to be fixed by Microsoft, as evidenced by the multiple postings I have found online:

> https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_10-other_settings/windows-10-slow-delayed-or-no-notifications/61f76ca5-2464-45af-86e2-513ea496d9c6
> https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/insider/forum/insider_wintp-insider_desktop-insiderplat_pc/windows-10-notification-delay/81ceb0b6-a773-459a-acf6-b0c9228bc338
> https://superuser.com/questions/1114510/outlook-notifications-appear-after-a-delay
> https://www.reddit.com/r/Windows10/comments/4www03/anyone_else_notifications_showing_up_late_on/

I have tried disabling Cortana using GPO and restarting my machine but that didn't help.

[Tracking Requested - why for this release]:
Can we raise this issue with Microsoft to see where they are at with finding a fix (the first link in that list was filed in 2016 and has many replies, most recently August 2018)?

Otherwise I propose that we either delay shipping this change or find an easy way for users to switch back to non-native notifications if they are experiencing a delay.

Comment 1

[Peter Saint-Andre [:stpeter]]

Just pinged the Mozilla-Microsoft coordination list to request a status update.

Comment 2

[Matthew N. [:MattN]]

Did you check if you have Quiet Hours / Focus Assist enabled? There are many options that can automatically turn it on (time of day, playing a game, mirroring the screen, etc.). I haven't used it so I'm not sure how obvious it would be if that was the issue. It seems like you can control whether it tells you that it's turning on.

Comment 3

[Brian Birtles (:birtles, Feb 26~ parental leave)]

We're not planning on shipping the Toast Notifications to release yet (bug 1497425). I believe there are quite a number of issues to fix before we can do that.

Comment 4

[Julien Cristau [:jcristau] (back April 22)]

Not tracking for 64 as this isn't going to release yet.

Comment 5

[Jared Wein [:jaws] (please needinfo? me)]

(In reply to Matthew N. [:MattN] (PM me if requests are blocking you) from comment #2)
> Did you check if you have Quiet Hours / Focus Assist enabled? There are many
> options that can automatically turn it on (time of day, playing a game,
> mirroring the screen, etc.). I haven't used it so I'm not sure how obvious
> it would be if that was the issue. It seems like you can control whether it
> tells you that it's turning on.

Thanks, I checked and I do not have Quiet Hours or Focus Assist enabled.

Comment 6

[Firefox Bug Husbandry Bot]

See bug 1547409. Moving webcompat whiteboard tags to keywords.

Comment 7

[Nick Rishel [:nrishel]]

Is this still an problem with Windows 10+? From a quick search is seems like discussion on the issue died sometime in 2020.

Comment 8

[Nick Rishel [:nrishel]]

ni: missed for prior question.

Comment 9

[Jared Wein [:jaws] (please needinfo? me)]

(In reply to Nick Rishel [:nrishel] from comment #8)

ni: missed for prior question.

The feature has been disabled on Nightly builds for a long time now, and I tried looking for the pref to re-enable it recently but couldn't find it in the short amount of time I had. So I'm not sure if it is still re-occuring.

Comment 10

[Nick Rishel [:nrishel]]

alerts.useSystemBackend is the config you were looking for. Anecdotally I haven't seen any delayed notifications since enabling the pref and absence of conversations about it after 2020 implies this is not a problem anymore.

If you'd like to give it a quick check give me a heads up, otherwise I think we can close the issue for now.

Comment 11

[Jared Wein [:jaws] (please needinfo? me)]

(In reply to Nick Rishel [:nrishel] from comment #10)

alerts.useSystemBackend is the config you were looking for. Anecdotally I haven't seen any delayed notifications since enabling the pref and absence of conversations about it after 2020 implies this is not a problem anymore.

If you'd like to give it a quick check give me a heads up, otherwise I think we can close the issue for now.

I flipped the pref and will let you know. I don't see any delay right now with testing. I'll close the bug and will reopen it if I see it again. Thanks!