Signal-desktop: [Electron] doesn't play audio notifications

[deutrino]

Audio notifications haven't been working for a while for me. This definitely affected 1.0.26 as I just upgraded to 1.0.27 a few minutes ago. I'm not sure whether this started before #1445 or not, my hunch is yes but I'm not positive. I've turned notifications on and off, restarted the app, but it doesn't change it.

Platform info

Operating System: Linux Mint 18.2 - cinnamon 3.4.6+sonya - Linux 4.10.0-33-generic #37~16.04.1-Ubuntu SMP Fri Aug 11 14:07:24 UTC 2017 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
Signal version: Electron 1.0.27

Link to debug log

Here is a log with some incoming messages with the window in and out of focus.

https://gist.github.com/deutrino/a24cbc6bec7be5407708de5c3751fb72

[abhn]

Confirming this on my system, there's no audio notification regardless of the toggle of the 'play audio notification'.

Platform

OS: Arch Linux, Linux 4.13.4-1-ARCH #1 SMP PREEMPT Thu Sep 28 08:39:52 CEST 2017 x86_64 GNU/Linux, XFCE 4.12
Signal: 1.0.28

[liliakai]

Is there a system-level configuration for notification sounds/behaviors on these linux systems?

Currently we just pass a true/false flag to the Web Notifications api and then rely on the native notification integrations provided by electron to produce a system standard sound. On OSX this just works but I wouldn't be too suprised if we still need to generate our own sounds at least on Linux. 🤔

[liliakai]

Assuming the terrain isn't level across all platforms wrt system notification sound settings, I suppose the most reliable/consistent/simple thing to do here is to always suppress the system sound and just play our own custom sound or not based on our settings.

[abhn]

I'm trying to find a level api across all desktop environments in Linux. notify-send doesn't seem to have support for sound.

However, this spec page here says something about sound hints which can be passed to the notification server (https://developer.gnome.org/notification-spec/), but it is just a spec.

As you said, the most consistent way might be to do it ourselves and not rely on the platform.

[deutrino]

FWIW I'm fairly certain I did have notification sounds in Electron at one point. I could be misremembering from the Chrome app but I don't think so. So maybe it's a regression.

[h313]

Doesn't Chrome use their own notification system?

[heatherbooker]

I'm wondering which way would be ideal, if theoretically both custom and system notification audio worked as expected.

Using system notifications means that when users toggle notification audio at the system level, Signal respects that. Is that likely to be what most people expect/want?

Whereas using custom notifications means that Signal can override system settings, which can be annoying and unexpected (a la Whatsapp calls not respecting do not disturb on my phone >:( ), but also may provide more fine grained control that people like. I'm not sure!

[h313]

How about a "use native notifications" setting like Telegram has?

[scottnonnenberg]

Seems like this is about whether sounds are played, so it should be fixed. If you have recommendations for the sound, settings, whatnot, please file a different bug.