[iOS 15 Beta] Notification sounds not working

Mobile Apps Home Assistant Companion for Apple
1

edit: Got MacBook sounds working with no message text attached. Not working again. I have no idea what’s going on. Not entirely sure what fixed it. I think it may have been something with replacing the sound files with newly converted .mp3 to.wav files, then rebooting the macOS app. But I imported the exact same files into the iOS app and rebooted and it’s still not working with iPhone.

I updated my MacBook and iPhone yesterday/today and now notification sounds aren’t working.
Before this, I’ve been using the following action successfully for several automations. It causes a sound on my phone, without an actual message or notification appearing. Very useful to remind me to do something or notify about a state changing without having to clear an unnecessary message. And it allows me to leave my phone in silent mode without worrying about missing HA notifications.

  action:
    - service: notify.mobile_app_[iPhone]
      data: 
        data:
          push:
            sound:
              critical: 1
              name: ping.wav
              volume: 1
        message: >

Now it’s not working. If I add text to the message section, my Apple Watch does the standard critical notification sound with an alert for me to clear. If I remove my watch, and remove the critical part, and add text, and turn my phone off silent, I get the required sound, but again, has the alert to clear.
Any ideas what has changed by switching to iOS 15 that would cause this to break?

2

It looks like you are using a whitespace-ful message to try and send non-text-based – I’m guessing this case is something Apple has removed from critical notifications, since you don’t want to play a critical alert sound without the accompanying message.

The Apple Watch doesn’t support custom notification sounds, so it is playing a custom sound in that instance, it sounds like something that slipped through their normal notification playing code.

I’m guessing it’s mostly that they’ve patched this particular functionality out of iOS, but I haven’t seen any documentation around that change. They did overhaul a lot of the critical / time-sensitive notification stuff this release.

3

Damn. That’s a pain if they’ve made it no longer possible.
Guess I’m going to have to try find a work around that won’t leave a bunch of notifications on my phone, and that will actually bypass my watch so it’s a custom sound.

4

I got it working on my iPhone just changed the notification delivery to Immediate Delivery as it was on Scheduled Delivery and it started working.

Settings > home assistant > Notifications >

5

I didn’t even have that setting until I went to the main notification settings, set it up and added home assistant to the list.
Still did it and then turned it back to immediate delivery, and it’s still not working.
At least that suggests that it is possible, and there must be something else blocking it

6

Ok, it is not working now after changing some settings and restarting my phone.

Apples Home app isn’t working too

Edit: Both started working with AirPods now.
Edit2: And without changing anything both stopped again.

7

Got it working now with the beta HA iOS app added this to the automation

     data:
        push:
          interruption-level: critical
8

Still not working for me. Is there anything else you’ve added to the automation?

9

This is what works for me.

alias: Shed movement Away
description: Send notification when motion is detected in shed
trigger:
  - type: motion
    platform: device
    device_id: XXXXXX
    entity_id: binary_sensor.shed_motion_sensor
    domain: binary_sensor
condition:
  - condition: device
    device_id: XXXXXX
    domain: device_tracker
    entity_id: device_tracker.XXXXXX
    type: is_not_home
action:
  - service: notify.mobile_app_XXXXXX
    data:
      message: Shed
      data:
        push:
          interruption-level: critical
          sound: Choo_Choo.caf
          volume: 1
      title: Motion detected in
mode: single
10

I was trying to go back to having no message so that just a custom sound would play on my phone (no visible alert), instead of having a critical notification alert show up on my apple watch. The watch doesn’t allow custom sounds, and since I always wear it, I’m unable to actually make use of the custom sounds.
The way it used to work, I could have a certain sound play to let me know it’s time to get ready for work, a different one sound while I’m driving to tell me the security system has either armed or disarmed, another for if the doorbell rings and of course one for if the security system actually gets triggered. The only one I actually wanted a visible alert to show up for was if the security was triggered, and that just so I could see what triggered it.
I get the feeling that it just isn’t possible anymore.

12

I haven’t tried the beta HA, so the only work around for me at present was to add a text message to the iPhone notifications that previously only had a ‘space’ to just trigger the custom sound on it’s own.

I have had to disable the iWatch notifications in order for it now to play my custom messages on my iPhone. Where as previously I could send a text message to my iWatch, and then have the custom sound message play on my iPhone without a message by using the ‘space’ method.