no banners nor sounds from Messages.app in OS X Mountain Lion -- only for open iMessage conversations
This is driving me crazy, seriously.
I have problems displaying banners/alerts of incoming messages, as well as hearing the notification sound, when using the iMessage service with Messages.app on the latest version of OS X 10.8.
The strange behaviour only occurs when using the iMessage service. For all other im services such as GTalk/Jabber and the like Messages behaves as expected: that is, it play sounds on incoming messages, and display the banners in the corner as well as in the Notification Center side panel.
Here is what happens instead with iMessage:
First, when the app is closed and I receive a new message from somebody whose chat box had been previously closed (archived), or from a new buddy -- that is, the conversation is not in the left panel of the main Messages window, then:
- the app opens itself in the background -- so far so good;
- the FIRST new message does NOT make any sound, nor displays any banner or alert, although the dock's badge is updated with the "1" unread-message count -- the message is being downloaded, so it's not a server issue;
- then, for all the messages following the first one, if any, Messages DOES display banners/alerts and does play the "New Message" sound; moreover, each message is correctly shown in the Notification Center, as expected. Fine -- well, not really!
If I then click on the banner, or I activate somehow the application in order to reply to the messages, then if any new messages arrive hereafter in the active chat-box these will NOT play any sound, nor will they display any banner/alert -- no matter whether the application itself is active in the foreground, is hidden in the background, or its main window is closed -- whatever!!!
The only way to get sounds, banners and the Notification Center's updates back again, as I have discovered after various trials, is to actually do "Close Converersation" (in the File menu, CMD-SHIFT-W or click on the little close button).
After that, if another message is received, something still quite different occurs:
- the FIRST message of the new conversation plays the "Text Invitation" pop-like sound, do you remember that? Note that I have the default "Auto-accept.scpt" applescript set on this event, so all new text chats are automatically accepted. I have just selected it from the "Alerts" panel in the Messages.app settings, I havent' touched the script itself. By the way, a banner is also displayed and the NC comes back alive.
- similarly, all the following messages after the first play the common "New Message" sound and the banners get displayed correctly UNTIL....
- ... until I activate the application window! Then no more banners nor sounds just like the situation above, unless again I manually close the conversation (not the window itself but the specific conversation's tab only).
***
I believe this behaviour is altogether stupid, and if this was made by design then I will never use iMessage again and will discourage others to do until it's done right.
For one who is accustomed to Growl notifications, this is not the way a banner notification for a IM app should work. The banner (and/or sound) for incoming messages should be displayed whenever the app is not the frontmost one, that is, either it's hidden or its main window is closed and the app is not active.
And not like Messages.app seemingly do, that is, triggering banners/sounds only for new conversations and until the user engages with them, and after that stopping all notifications (except for the helpless dock badge -- I usually keep the Dock hidden), until the user deliberately decides to close the conversation.
I DON'T want to close a conversation to receive notifications every single time I activate another app do something else!
Please, if any of you is reading this, try to reproduce the bug (because it's a bug!) and let me know thant I am not alone in this.
thank you.
Cosimo
PS: Perhaps I should also mention that I am using iMessage on both my iPhone 4S and on my MacBook Air, and using the same iCloud email address as sender ID so that I can reply from both devices. Anyway, I have tried to disable iMessage on the iPhone while I was testing the bug on the Mac to see whether it might be related somehow, but the bug will occur in any case, whether I'm logged in or not from the iPhone. I did the test by sending myself imessages from another device of mine, an iPad logged with a different iCloud account which is not related to mine, i.e. it's not in my personal card in Contacts.app (I know there's a similar problem in Mail.app, which doesn't display banners for email sent to oneself).
OS X Mountain Lion