I noticed when apps are installed on Chinese androids they generally magically work just fine. I remember reading that at install time the app detects if it's on a western or Chinese phone and it reconfigures itself accordingly (this was with Signal)
The issues appear when you install on a western phone and disable Google play services and the apps keep trying to access them
For instance on my mainland xiaomi Instagram works just fine, but on my Taiwanese xiaomi (with the global ROM) it won't do notifications and I don't know how to fix it
If there a way to have apps install in this Chinese mode?
It depends on how the developer chooses to implement the notifications and on how the app is distributed. The Play Store distribution of Signal uses Firebase Cloud Messaging (via Google Play Services or microG) and falls back to WebSockets if FCM is unavailable. The website distribution[1] of Signal only uses WebSockets. I don't think Signal tries to detect whether the phone is Chinese, only whether FCM is available.
Since Google services (including FCM) are blocked in China, apps that serve both Chinese and non-Chinese users usually find some way to support both FCM and the Chinese equivalents. For example, Airbnb serves users both inside and outside of China, so they distribute two builds of their app. The Play Store distribution of Airbnb relies solely on FCM for push notifications. The Chinese distribution of Airbnb,[2] according to an App Manager[3] tracker scan, bundles push notification libraries from JPush,[4] Xiaomi, Huawei, and Vivo.
Developers can choose to have one app distribution that support all of these services, or they can release separate builds that each handle some of these services. This varies from app to app.
Ohhh, releasing multiple apks. That hadnt occured to me but it makes sense. I do use the Huawei app store which may be why I generally don't have issues
Im still not super clear why Instagram/Messenger don't give notifications. It could be that they started using Google services at some point and I hadn't noticed, though I'd find that surprising given theyre competitors. Maybe I should try this AppManager. Also LINE will not work - but I've never had that work in the past. Another workaround that sometimes works is finding a "Lite" version or the all. But they've been mostly deprecated in recent years
I noticed when apps are installed on Chinese androids they generally magically work just fine. I remember reading that at install time the app detects if it's on a western or Chinese phone and it reconfigures itself accordingly (this was with Signal)
The issues appear when you install on a western phone and disable Google play services and the apps keep trying to access them
For instance on my mainland xiaomi Instagram works just fine, but on my Taiwanese xiaomi (with the global ROM) it won't do notifications and I don't know how to fix it
If there a way to have apps install in this Chinese mode?