Hi. Pushcut just stopped delivering some notifications and I can’t figure out why.
Can anyone help?
Can you provide any details at all? There’s nothing to analyse in what you have posted so far.
- Remote and/or local triggers - what source?
- One or all devices?
- Any other services involved?
- Have you Tried restarting?
- etc.
I hope you don’t mind me sharing that in your email you mentioned a daily scheduled notification, and you also wrote about being uncertain about the notification handling on the Apple Watch.
Here are the details about general notification handling with an Apple Watch: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204791
If you want, you can disable Pushcut notifications for watchOS in the Watch app on your iPhone.
Please verify that Pushcut still has permissions to show notifications (Pushcut > Settings > System Settings > Notifications). Also, sometimes people do not realize they have ‘Do not disturb’ turned on when they start missing notifications. Maybe double-check that you do not have DND (or screen time limits) turned on.
As @sylumer suggested, a good old device restart is always a good idea if things start to act up with software. You should definitely try that before going down deeper into the rabbit whole.
In Pushcut, please verify the following:
- does tapping “Test Notification” still work on the notification in question?
- does the local trigger have a location constraint enabled that might not be fulfilled?
- is the trigger enabled?
As a last resort, you could try to
- open the local trigger
- set Enabled to false
- tap Done, open it again
- set Enabled to true
- tap Done
This would recreate the scheduled notification in iOS - but I am not aware of any open issues in this area.
Let us know if any of this fixed your problem - ideally you can even report which did the trick.
ok, one more question: is it possible that you have very many time-based local notifications scheduled (more than 64?) - because that is pushing against an iOS limit that might result in funky behavior.
I am not sure if Pushcut handles this all too well at the moment to be honest.
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Yeah I think that’s the case!
oh no… sorry, I can see how that can result in a very confusing situation.
unfortunately, building a robust “local trigger” solution around this limitation is not trivial, and I am not sure I will get a chance to do so any time soon.
what you can definitely do is use the webhook from a solution triggered by IFTTT, Zapier, or Integromat and create all your schedules there. that way there are no device limits in place. you could even link the notifications to a google calendar for full visibility and control (eg: like described here)
hope that helps, sorry for the inconvenience 
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Is there any other way?
Perhaps I could just cut back on some of the triggers? Would that solve the problem? If I delete triggers?
It’s like they are stuck somehow. But otherwise I will just go back to using Due for some of the notifications without location triggers
yes, cutting them down to < 64 should solve all your problems again.
maybe one thing to look at is to use the “Daily” option instead of the “Weekly” option with all days selected - for technical reasons “weekly” might create a separate iOS schedule for each day of the week, even when it is “every day”…
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thanks I will look into it when I have time. So just to understand: there is a (sort) of limit totalling to 64 triggers?
If I start using webhooks, would that make the app work again beyond the limit of 64? I haven’t looked into how that webhook functionality works yet, but I will. I just need to be assured that the reliability is stable with webhooks, otherwise I will move essential reminders out of puschut, which is annoying as I have to rely on other reminders apps as well
there are no limits at all for webhook calls or notifications. there are also no limits for background actions or most location-based triggers (with time constraints).
the < 64 limit only applies to simultaneously scheduled local iOS notifications, which are basically:
- time-based local triggers (one per day of week, or one for “daily”)
- one per plain location-trigger without any extra condition
- one per local notifications scheduled using the shortcuts actions
- one per “delayed” notification triggered by a location event
everything else uses methods without these limitations.
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I keep getting notifications for a notification that I deleted on all devices. Why is that?
hmmm… can you a bit more specific? I assume we are talking about local triggers?
can you double-check in your “Local Triggers” view on the device you receive the notification if it is actually removed?
I am not aware of an issues in this area, but maybe the problem you ran into with the 64 limit has other side-effects…
Yeah it’s not there on either device, but the notification keeps popping up. I assume it’s causing the problems of other notifications not showing…
Very strange
@sliemeobn, would uninstalling and reinstalling the app (after ensuring that iCloud sync is enabled for backup purposes) have the capacity to clear out any rogue notification triggering?
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Yes, removing and reinstalling the app will clear out any rogue notifications - however, this will also clear our all your local triggers (as these are stored on-device and not in the cloud). you will need to re-create them.
unfortunately, I also do not see any other alternative for this case at the moment.
sorry for the bad experience you are having. software just always finds a way to mess you up…
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@sylumer thanks guys. I will try to install and set them up again from scratch and possible move those without location-based triggers back to Due or try out the webhook-thing
I will report back! Best wishes,
Andreas
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Maybe a future release could include an export/import/backup feature to help mitigate this sort of edge case, the loss/failure of a device etc?
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import/export seems too complicated to deal with to me (both data-wise, as you would be “referencing” notifications and locations, but also user-experience wise…)
As far as I know, if you restore from your iOS backup your local triggers should also be restored - but that is not something that is easily “tested continuously”.
I have it on the list to strengthen this area, but I am not sure yet what the best course of action will be - ideally something that “just works” ; )
Well lots of apps export and import settings, and can create automatic backups. I suspect relative complexity from an end user perspective for most Pushcut users is Well something beyond import/export.
Just works is ideal, but that users are starting to experience issue that might require a strong approach to cleaning house, pragmatism vs. perfection may help you longer term until you can find a perfect solution.
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