Sync notifications across all devices

[Aleik]

Hi,

Is there any way of syncing the "has been read/acknowledged" property of a notification across your phone, tablet, PC etc? That's technical terminology of a novice by the way! If I use internet on my phone and receive emails, social updates, etc, I'll dismiss these, but if I turn a tablet on, they all need addressing again. Not a huge issue of course, just wondering if there was a neat trick out there to stop it?

Thanks

 

[SpookDroid]

Well, this depends on which apps you're using. GMail will sync these across devices (as long as all devices are set to, well, sync). Hangouts is even 'smart' enough to sync messages to all devices but not notify you on all of them if it can tell that you're chatting away on a computer, or stop notifications on the computer when you switch to phone.

But apps like the stock E-Mail, will still show notifications on all devices that received them, but usually will sync read status. What's this? If you have a phone and a computer ON, both will receive the notifications and once you read the messages, they will be marked as read on both. But if you only have your computer on (as in 'your phone is not getting notified'), when you read the messages, this status is synced to the server, so when you turn your phone on, the notifications will not come through; if you hadn't read the messages on the computer, these would still appear as 'new' and your phone would get notifications right away.

But others, like Facebook, will not sync across, so whatever you get notified for on your phone, will still be waiting for you on your tablet (it does sync read status, though, so whatever notification or new story you've read, it will be marked as read on all devices...what's funny though, is that notifications will not).

 

[Aleik]

Very informative, thanks for the reply! Seems so simple to implement, to my mind anyway, and I'm a rookie. If you could have a constantly up to date "shared folder" years ago on a Windows platform, the mind boggles as to why something whose state is altered (e.g. from "unread" to "read") can't be updated in the same way.

 

[SpookDroid]

My sentiments exactly. I've sent countless e-mails about this to Facebook (I hate that when I turn my tablet on, all notifications I've already read and dismissed on other devices come pouring through, and when you open the app, you find that they ARE, in fact, already dismissed).