In the previous post, I’ve had a look at how to set up UnifiedPush (UP) on Android. The easiest option: Download the SunUp app, switch-off battery optimization so it can run in the background and you are done. Easy! At the moment, I’m using UP on GrapheneOS for two applications: Tusky, a Mastodon reader and Molly-FOSS, a Signal messenger fork which replaces the Google cloud notification service with UnifiedPush. Molly-FOSS can run on its own without UP, but then uses Signal’s fallback proprietary web socket push system that sends keep-alive packets several times a minute. This is very power inefficient and I wouldn’t want to use this method in practice. Setting up UP in Molly-FOSS is not difficult, but it was a bit confusing for me at first, because it requires an additional setup step which is not part of the normal UP configuration procedure. Let me explain:
The additional setup step is required because the Signal server does not support UniversalPush natively. Unfortunately, it only speaks to Google to send push for notifications. However, the Molly-FOSS developers have come up with a ‘Signal to UnifiedPush’ gateway solution to bridge that gap.
Once you have a working UnifiedPush setup on your device (see previous post for details), getting notifications for Molly-FOSS over UnifiedPush instead of Signal’s very power hungry proprietary web socket solution is done as follows: In Molly-FOSS, navigate to ‘Notifications’ and then to ‘Push notifications’ and select ‘Unified Push’ as delivery service. Molly-FOSS will then ask which app to use for the UnifiedPush API. I’m using the SunUp app (see previous post) on one device and the Conversations app on another. Both work perfectly.
Once the UnifiedPush API app is selected, the final step required is to select a ‘Signal to UnifiedPush’ gateway. This is done by giving Molly-FOSS access to the camera to scan the barcode of a gateway. The gateway software is open source so it can be self-hosted. Also, there are a number of public gateways available, and I’m using Adminforge’s Molly gateway in my setup. After this, the setup is complete and notifications for incoming messages are now pushed to Molly-FOSS on your mobile device immediately.
Summary
To get Molly-FOSS working with UnifiedPush, download a UP API app such as SunUp and allow it to run in the background. Then configure Molly-FOSS to use this app as UP API provider and scan the 2D barcode of a Signal-to-UP gateway. Done!