Setup your own Unified Push Service for Telegram

Telegram works without Unified Push. However, this means that Google, Apple and law enforcement can track your location and your IP address using Apple’s or Google’s Push Notifications. This is a problem for privacy. You can opt out from this surveillance by using Unified Push and hosting a Unifies Push Service yourself. This blog post describes how to host it and configure Telegram, Signal, Matrix and Mastodon to use it.

Setup NTFY as a Docker Container

In the docker-compose.yml that I created in first blog post, I add this:

# docker-compose.yml
services:
  # ...
  ntfy:
    image: binwiederhier/ntfy
    container_name: ntfy
    command:
      - serve
    environment:
      - TZ=Europe/London    # optional: set desired timezone
#    user: UID:GID # optional: replace with your own user/group or uid/gid
    volumes:
      - ./ntfy/cache:/var/cache/ntfy
      - ./ntfy/etc:/etc/ntfy
#    ports:
#      - 80:80
    healthcheck: # optional: remember to adapt the host:port to your environment
        test: ["CMD-SHELL", "wget -q --tries=1 http://localhost:80/v1/health -O - | grep -Eo '\"healthy\"\\s*:\\s*true' || exit 1"]
        interval: 60s
        timeout: 10s
        retries: 3
        start_period: 40s
    restart: unless-stopped

This stores all the data of this push service in the ./ntfy directory. This starts the service:

services$ docker compose up -d
[+] Running 2/0
 ✔ Container services-ntfy-1                   Running      0.0s 
 ✔ Container services-nginx-proxy-manager-1    Running      0.0s 

Configure Nginx Proxy Manager for NTFY

Configure NGINX Proxy Manager to expose ntfy.

We had configured that all sub-domains of hosted.quelltext.eu get directed to the server. In the screenshots above you can see that we add websocket support and request a new certificate for ntfy.hosted.quelltext.eu. The name to redirect to is again the name of the docker container since they are in the same docker network services-default.

When this service is successfully running, you should see it on your configured domain. We will continue to use ntfy.hosted.quelltext.eu. You can do so, too.

Install the NTFY App

You should install the NTFY app to use the self-hosted service.

Go to Settings ➡ General and set these values:

• Default Server: https://ntfy.hosted.quelltext.eu/

This should allow you now, to register with the server.

Configure Telegram to use Unified Push

Sadly, the main Telegram App does not support Unified Push. However, the fork Mercurygram does support it. Here are some links:

• Install Mercurygram from F-Droid
• Mercurygram Source Code Repository
• Mercurygram on Appteka

Mercurygram works like Telegram. In Settings ➡ Notifications and Sounds ➡ Other, you can configure to use Unified Push. At the point of writing this, I could not configure my own NTFY server.

Configure Signal to use Unified Push

We need an adapter “Mollydocket” for this, if we want to self-host this. Again, add this to the docker-compose.yml and run docker compose up -d:

  mollysocket:
    # from https://github.com/mollyim/mollysocket/blob/main/docker-compose.yml
    image: ghcr.io/mollyim/mollysocket:1
    container_name: mollysocket
    restart: always
    volumes:
      - ./mollysocket:/data
    working_dir: /data
    command: server
    environment:
      - MOLLY_DB="/data/mollysocket.db"
      # Do not add space in the array ["http://a.tld","*"]
      - MOLLY_ALLOWED_ENDPOINTS=["*"]
      - MOLLY_ALLOWED_UUIDS=["*"]
      - MOLLY_HOST=0.0.0.0
      - MOLLY_PORT=8020
      - RUST_LOG=info
#    ports:
#      - "8020:8020"

Configure NGINX Proxy Manager to expose mollysocket.

This service is then running under mollysocket.hosted.quelltext.eu.

Again, by default, Signal does not support Unified Push. However, Molly does. We can add the Molly Repository to our F-Droid app as described on their website.

Then, we can change to our own hosted mollysocket instance in Settings ➡ Notifications ➡ Push Strategy.

• Delivery Method: Unified Push
• Click on Unified Push ➡
  • Notification Method: ntfy
  • Server URL: https://mollysocket.hosted.quelltext.eu/

Now, the Status should show: OK

Configure Matrix to use Unified Push

Schildichat is configured to use NTFY.

I use Schildichat to chat on Matrix servers. It has Unified Push built in.

Go to Settings ➡ Notifications ➡ Notifications configuration and choose ntfy as Notification method.

Configure Mastodon to use Unified Push

In order to use Mastodon with Unified Push, you will need to use an client App that supports Unified Push. I use Pachli for this reason.

Go to Preferences ➡ Notifications and configure ntfy.

Mastodon client Pachli configured to use my NTFY service.

Now, you can follow @unifiedpush@fosstodon.org.

Summary

In this blog post, we show how to setup your own Unified Push infrastructure and migrate the some of the most common apps to use it.