Disabling flux notifications

Ennea

@adminmaasdijk Uhh.. if you could also share some information on which keys to modify, that would be great..

herf

Which ones do you want to disable?

The backwards alarm clock has a checkbox, because not everyone wants it.

We avoid all fullscreen cases (movies, etc.) so if you are seeing this please report it.

We aren't likely to disable the update ones because that's the only way to say we updated.

The rest are usually confirming an action (like disabling for an app) that drive like half of our support emails...so those should be "hard" to disable, but I can understand if you'd like an option.

Ennea

@herf To be honest.. all of them. And to be honest again, I don't even know which. Everything else about f.lux is basically just smooth sailing, and I absolutely love you guys for creating such a hassle free experience. I do remember disabling notifications via Windows' notification center rather quickly after updating to the beta, but I honestly can't remember which notifications bothered me. In general, though, I believe that if you throw your own notifications at me, you should also provide me with a way to disable all of them if I wish to do that.

herf

@Ennea thanks - I understand a big off switch is the right solution sometimes.

I think we won't change the update notifications right now, but if you have any other that drive you crazy, please let me know and I'll try to make it better.

Ennea

@herf Will have to use current version for a while to see if anything is driving me crazy in the current release. I will get back to you if I have anything. Thank you for the quick replies!

Edkiefer

I don't know if this been posted, but in Win10 (1703, CU) in settings>notifications> app notifications of senders I keep finding that the long duplicate listings of flux which enable all apps set to on.
So say after a update, I had some apps off but when I go to app notification list everyone is on.
All I have to do is turn off one of the flux ones (around midway point and that sets all apps to how I set them previously.
Hmm, I just reset them 3x and all my apps keep being set on.
Going to set the global on/off to off, just not worth it.

Edit: I have another install of 1703 in VM, w/o f.lux installed (hardly anything installed) and I am seeing on/off resetting the same here, so must be win10.

herf

Yes we stopped using this mechanism entirely, and I reported the issue to Microsoft. However, the old settings still may appear.

We were calling through the old/ancient "bubble" notifications so it would work on XP/Win7+, and on Win10, these bubbles would get translated to "unique" app IDs that would show up here.

It is a bit of work to support UWP "toasts" from a non-UWP app (possible but not easy), and to make it work the same on Windows 7 I just made my own notifiers for now (sort of like Chrome and Dropbox do).

Edkiefer

Ok, So do you know if all the duplicate F.lux will get removed after a while.
Maybe uninstall and reinstall might fix it ?

Or Will only way be to hack/edit the Db?

herf

I am hoping Microsoft will clean it up, but we may have to make a tool for it (which would involve running sqlite commands on a database we didn't make!)

If you want it gone immediately messing with the db seems to be the main way.

Edkiefer

I did a little experiment, I uninstalled f.lux 439, shutdown system few times and nothing happens, its still shows many flux in notification list (70-75 flux 0n/off).
I then uninstalled "sports" which is in list to and I don't use.
This time, even without reboot it got removed from notification list.

So my "guess" is the app is doing the clean up or at least for MS stuff.

I will see what happens in few days, if OS maintenance fixes/cleans up list.

herf

For me, the old entries seem not to be cleaned up (I had some dating to 2016 until I deleted them). But yes if you register a UWP app ID and then uninstall it should be easy for the system to clean it up. These other ones are assigned to Windows Explorer, which is never really uninstalled.

Ultimately we hope Microsoft can clean these up, and I don't want to go deleting internal parts of Windows databases without a really good reason.

As far as I can tell, any application that creates a "balloon" notification will leave one of these behind.

Edkiefer

I think I am going to edit it myself , I copied my org dB over to safe folder and then another copy which I edited.

I used this site for reference
https://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?depth=1&hl=en&ie=UTF8&prev=_t&rurl=translate.google.com&sl=auto&sp=nmt4&tl=en&u=https://www.deskmodder.de/wiki/index.php%3Ftitle%3DBenachrichtigungen_und_Aktionen_Alte_Eintr%25C3%25A4ge_entfernen_l%25C3%25B6schen_Windows_10&usg=ALkJrhgC4QsNqtn73aba7i1aTHAC2sPfHg#Benachrichtigungen_und_Aktionen_entfernen_Win_10_1607

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_10-other_settings/remove-an-uninstalled-app-from-the-notification/6cb57f86-23fd-4261-8922-e49f344095e5?page=8

I found close to same count as listed in settings>notification app list , I didn't see any pointer to flux or on/off text as shown there. I didn't see any sender references either.

But I cleaned up all pointers to these duplicates, which here a example (they all have same char # count (70) ).
Microsoft.Explorer.Notification.{BF87B514-CA36-5F43-467F-1438BD3ECDD7}

Thats just example of one, then I can try to just overwrite the bloated one.

This sound right?
also I notice size of file didn't change, would compacting option be good idea, I guess if it loads fast I can leave it, right now it takes like 15sec to load app list in setting.

oosinoots

@Edkiefer I did edit the db and can confirm that the dupe entries went away. Have not tried the new update yet, but I will soon I think.

Edkiefer

OK, Just so others know, you can't do what I commented in my above post. You must do the editing in that folder, as the other files get updated to.
I tried to copy/paste my edited file over which seemed to work and show list cleaned up but after reboot.
The list never populated at all and cpu% stayed like 25-30.
I ended up copying back the stock one and deleteing the other files and doing few explorer restarts. That brought me back to dirty, long app sender list with normal cpu%, then I edited again in working dir as guides say too. now its clean up aftr reboot and all seem ok

Edit Looking around the system tray icon list I have like 6 entries of flux there to (settings>personalization>taskbar>"select which icons appear in taskbar"

Edkiefer

Little update on this after few days, you need to be careful of any duplicate entries or handleID that are in some of other modules.
I noticed in eventview had some errors on notification service (WpnUserService) getting restarted.
What it was I had two entires that would not allow deleting, well you can delete them but SQLiteDatabaseBrowserPortable says its not there in Notificationhandle ,so I had these values (handleID still in Handlesettings. Once I removed them that fixed eventview errors.

But because of those handle ID that couldn't be deleted I still got 2 duplicates in list (Windows stuff (Suggested and Windows UniversalNotifcation ).
So need to be careful, I guess I could try recopying the backup over but while reading up I found another person saying that just deleting the file "wpndatabase.db" will fix it on next reboot, in other words resetting.

That sounded risky to do on main system, So I made a copy of one of my test win10 1703 VM and once you stop two services with Windows Push Notifications System Service, which was locking from deleting. Once stopped was able and after a reboot, I was back to same clean DB, but this VM didn't have any problems, but it shows you can reset to stock setting the db.
I am going to watch this install and see if anything funny starts happening.

I wouldn't recommend it at this time yet, but might be a option or hopefully MS or someone with make an easy reset tool.

Sorry for long post.

Bladebringer

Interestingly, thanks a lot for making some points clear.