I guess there’s a misunderstanding from my side, I don’t have any option to “minimise” so I assumed you meant to disable “Show notifications”.
Based on what you write it seems like actually it is my phone that is missing some option to minimise this notification.
not a misunderstanding, different manufacturers have different terminology…its probably “silent” here. We can’t account for every difference unfortunately but here’s a Google Doc saying its one or the other.
For those noticing battery drain and have the default websocket setting for Screen On, we have a fix that should help in those cases as the websocket was not being shut down as fast as it could on devices with ambient display. This fix is in the latest beta on github and will be pushed to the play store on Saturday.
Personally I have mine set to Always and do not notice any major battery drain with the option.
Thanks a lot for the insights.
It turns out that on my Samsung device I have to choose “silent” and then a sub-option appears to minimise notifications which I also have to activate.
However all it does is make the persistent notification a bit smaller so that it now reads “Home Ass… Listening to Home Assistant…”. Still not great to have this appear all the time in the notifications.
Yeah, we are now seriously stuck with a permanent notification for ever that serve no purpose? This is not good…
On Pixel phone, the only option I have is to disable completely or leave ot Silent (but still there in tray)…
it does indeed serve a purpose, its for local push notifications.
Ok, so if I don’t use local push notifications (I use pushover for my notification) I can safely disable this?
The reason I find it bad is that it is the fourth app on my phone that requires me to have an always on notification. My notification bar is basically always filled which I find not user friendly at all.
set the websocket connection to Never in that case and it will remove the notification and the service will not run saving you battery life
Thanks a lot, this solve it for my configuration. That would be good if Android had a way to better deal with this.
There is a noticeable drain increase on my side. Home Assistant drained 2% in an hour with websocket always enabled, notification minimized and background access enabled. Without websocket the drain is usually around 1.5%, but daily not hourly.
Samsung S20 FE on Android 12.
I found the persistent notification incredibly obnoxious so set the websocket link to never. Notifications working great still with this off 
I’ve had it to always on my tablet, mounted on the wall in the kitchen (it’s always on) for a few hours. I got a funny notifications every … half hour or even more frequent (quite random, basically) with no additional visual info, just sound. So i turned websocket off, too, since it’s annoying.
If i understand correct a device must be connected locally (via local address) for websocket to work. So, on my phone it’s useless, too, since i don’t have local address entered. If i do, i loose connection everytime i come home and phone enters my wifi range (logically, too…phone disconnects internet from 4G and connects to wifi). Since i open my main and garage doors with HA on my phone i can’t afford to loose connection at that moment.
Notifications via google for now works perfect. Hoping to stay that way.
no, websockets will work as long as the app can communicate to your server
To everyone else we have pushed 2022.2.1 which updates the default setting for play store installations to Never. This set things back to how things were, this change only impacts users who did not already change the setting. The settings page text was also updated to be more understandable.
Aha…thanks for explanation. To be honest, i don’t exactly know right now why they would be usefull for me, because i still don’t fully understand them… i thought that they are like push notifications, just directly, not via google… right or wrong?
So, if you have any links, examples… they would be usefull.
Thats the main difference, notifications that come from google are subject to a rate limit and slower delivery.
Here are the docs that go into detail: Local Push | Home Assistant Companion Docs
The blog post also covers the differences as well.
Thanks! BTW… now i see where i’ve read that local push is only via local connection - it says on this page for iOS (as limitation of the system). I have android, so i’m “safe”.
What annoys me a bit is constant notification “home assistant is listening via websocket” which is shown the moment i enable websockets. But if i hide it i guess i won’t see other notifications, too…
did you read the blog post? We do cover this part.
Android uses notification channels which allow you to customzie the appearance of any notification. The persistent connection uses its own notification channel and has nothing to do with other notifications.
I did read it and on my phone it acts like it was described already in a thread: notification stays there unless i disable websocket completely… with “other notifications” i meant other from HA via websocket - if i set to disabled on my phone i think nothing will come through websocket so it’s pretty much the same as if i set websocket to “never” in HA app…
But, i did read that “normal” google way has limit of 500 notifications daily, which is far more than i’ll ever need…
I’m hoping I can piggyback on this subject, I’m trying to get the persistant notification to truly minimize, on Android 12. Previously, the notification was minimized correctly, but now it remains too big. I added a screenshot showing my ‘stack’ of silent, persistant notifications. You can see the other two silent notifications are on one line.
Does anyone know how to make the websocket notification truly minimize again?
Note: These things live in my notifications, by my own choice, to keep the services alive. So yes, in fact I choose to keep the websocket notification in place.
every device manufacturer uses different terminology, in the notification press the settings button. Then go to persistent connection notification channel at the bottom. From there youll find the setting to minimize/silence or whatever your manufacturer decided to call it.
