[satvikpendem]

Sorry I should clarify, by "it" I meant any sort of ping must go through Firebase Cloud Messaging, not that the message content itself goes through Firebase.

Looks like there is a way to bypass Firebase by using something like UnifiedPush which runs a perpetual background process that acts similar to Google Play Services to pick up notifications from the server and calls the local notification API.

[Zak]

It's theoretically possible to just keep an app running in the background all the time and periodically poll a server.

That's unreliable though since some OEM Android builds will kill it for that even if the user disables battery optimizations. Those OEMs sort of have a point; if lots of apps did that it would drain the battery fast.

[satvikpendem]

Then that's basically what I said right? That there is in practice no way to opt out of using Firebase if you want consistent notifications.

[lolc]

Not clear what your point is. The Signal server wakes up the app via an empty message. At most the info this conveys is that a Signal app got a message to pull.

[satvikpendem]

My point is there is no reasonable way to remove oneself from Google and Apple even with a fully custom application, they control the notification servers for their devices.

[lolc]

Yea sorry I didn't follow the thread properly.