Android app notifications "you may have new messages" and conversations don't update

[youbzh]

Guidelines

• I have searched searched open and closed issues for duplicates
• I am submitting a bug report for existing functionality that does not work as intended
• This isn't a feature request or a discussion topic

Bug description

The issue started a few weeks ago. On Android, I'm getting regular "you may have new messages" notifications, while the app doesn't have any battery restrictions whatsoever.

• Conversations are up to date on the desktop app but they don't update quickly on the Android app.
• Posting a personal note on the Android app updates the desktop app, but doing the opposite doesn't update the Android app.
• To update conversations on Android, I need to close the app and reopen it.
• I even got a notifications that "you may have new messages" while the app was open on my phone, as I'm writing this issue.

Thank you for your help, this is driving me nuts and ruining the experience for an otherwise wonderful app :(

Screenshots

No response

Device

Hisense A9 on LineageOS

Android version

7.54.1

Signal version

7.69.0 on MacOS

Link to debug log

Here are both debug logs:
Android app
https://debuglogs.org/android/7.54.1/acf4dccf92ab17bd272dc42f93b523fe6267831554d1baa1cbaf219d126fd633
Desktop app
https://debuglogs.org/desktop/7.69.0/43efb0c947dd5173791a5bcc501e4f526f0fe99c6ce05788bb6f96acff2121cc.gz

[cody-signal]

Your android log are littered with network reachability problems. It implies the OS is tell us there's internet available but when we go to connect we are unable to reach Signal servers. Does doing an app restart always fix the issue? Is there anything special about your phone/network setup? A proxy server or anything?

[youbzh]

I'm experiencing the issue quite severely these days, and indeed restarting the app doesn't always solve the problem, it might take minutes before the new messages are downloaded.

This is strange, since it happens both with my home Wifi and when I'm out using 4G. There is nothing particular about my network setup, no proxy, no VPN. All the other messaging apps are working properly. I've checked Signal's network authorisations, everything is properly setup there.

As said before, the issue appeared maybe a couple of weeks ago. I have another debug log from the 1st of september, so it looks like the issue appeared with the latest release. Should I try downgrading to see if this has anything to do with it?

[youbzh]

Quick update: I checked an older log and now I can say that the issue appeared after updating from 7.52.2 to 7.54.1. Here is the log in question:
https://debuglogs.org/android/7.54.1/e3a1e917f33aad99ed8727c0c8422b2e7a60023111f3c039442304896311d085

So I rolled back to 7.51.2 (for some reason after rolling bak to 7.52.2 Signal kept crashing), and the issue has disappeared. Here is the new log after rolling back:
https://debuglogs.org/android/7.51.2/ccb02f20e3dc1251f4f7be64cdf22c88b5204874753097e787c3248729fb2bfb

If you compare all three logs, "TCP connection timed out" messages only appear under 7.54.1

[cody-signal]

Appreciate the extra due diligence. We'll look into it right away. Thanks.

[andrew-signal]

Hi @youbzh!

If I'm reading your logs correctly, they indicate that you are failing to connect to a proxy that you have set in the system settings.

Here is a video of how you can check your system settings to see if you have one set:

Screen_recording_20250915_110002.webm

If so, you can try unsetting it if it is not needed, or you can reach out to whoever hosts your proxy to see if they can fix the issue there. Other apps may also be having the same problem.

We are already working on some improvements in this area, too.

Thanks for reporting the issue, and let me know if this was helpful or if you have more questions,

• Andrew