Gmail stopped syncing or other odd push notification issues? Read here...

[dmcman73]

I wanted to share my experience with everyone with some of the odd issues I was having with my phone. Just recently a lot of my apps were not notifying me of new messages, most importantly, Gmail would either not notify me of new email or I would receive the notification 4 hours after the email came in.

At first I thought it was my phone (I have a Nexus 6P) until I did a google search about my Gmail problem. Turns out people have been having this issue over the years (as far back as 2013) and it did not matter what brand phone it was on, I was assumed that this was an Android problem. I tried all the fixes that were recommended and nothing work, in fact some made the issue even worse.

I started to back track on when the issue started, trying to figure out if it was a new app I installed, a setting change....and then it dawned on me.....I was on another thread where some users were stating that they were not getting the 6.0.1 update on their Nexus phones and one user suggested to clear out the data on the google frameworks services and then reboot phone which would trigger the update. I did just that, I was being impatient for the 6.0.1 update, not sure why. I can pinpoint that all of my problems (my google play store even stopped working, but I was able to fix that by clearing the data files for that) started then after I cleared the data and when I went back to that thread, I saw a few more posts afterwards warning people to NOT do that and there was a link to this post on Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/Android/co...ear_data_for_google_service_framework/cdiymrp

It basically states that by clearing the data on the google framework services, you remove the GCM ID of your phone that the apps use to get push-notifications. Unfortunately the only way I was able to resolve this issue was factory resetting my phone so that a new GCM ID was generated and everything returned to normal.

Be careful of the data and cache files you clear. If you're having random push notification issues, think back if you cleared a system data like the Google framework services.

 

[gozirra]

Odd that the literally billions of cache clears other people have done, haven't caused their gmail to suddenly quit syncing (including myself). When you boot into recovery and choose clear cache, it literally formats the /cache partition. Pretty sure that catches everything.

 

[dmcman73]

I specifically cleared the Google Framework Services data within the app section.

The same issues that the Google Engineer stated would/could happen in that Reddit post happened to me.

The Cache and Data are two different things. Cache is where temporary data is stored (non important) that could fill up and possibly cause performance issues.

The Data files are where apps store files it needs to function.

Clearing the cache from recovery only clears the temporary cache and does not touch the data section at all. If it did, there would be a whole lot of issues.

You can test it yourself, clear out the cache how ever you want to (recovery or from the apps section in Settings) from an app like Facebook. You'll notice the app works as it did when you open it. Now, go back into settings and clear the data from the same app and try again, you'll notice that it will ask you to log back in as if you just installed the app because all of it's stored data was cleared.