No desktop notifications or unread badge for new messages in private channels after upgrade to 11.10.1

Summary

After upgrading Mattermost Server to 11.10.1, users in a newly created private channel do not receive notifications for new messages.

When a new message is posted:

• The channel name becomes bold, indicating that Mattermost correctly detects the unread message.
• No desktop notification is shown.
• No notification sound is played.
• No unread notification dot/badge appears on the Mattermost Desktop App icon.

The issue affects all members of the private channel.

Mattermost version

Mattermost Enterprise Edition 11.10.1

Deployment: Kubernetes.

Steps to reproduce

1. Create a private channel.
2. Add multiple users to the channel.
3. Make sure the users have notifications enabled.
4. Have one user post a new message while another user is not viewing the channel.
5. Observe the receiving user’s Mattermost client.

Expected behavior

When a new message is posted:

• The channel should become bold/unread.
• A desktop notification should be displayed according to the user’s notification preferences.
• A notification sound should be played when enabled.
• The Mattermost Desktop App should indicate unread activity with a badge/dot.

Observed behavior

The channel becomes bold, so the unread state is detected correctly.

However:

• No desktop notification is displayed.
• No notification sound is played.
• No unread badge/dot appears on the Mattermost Desktop App icon.

Opening Mattermost shows the affected channel in bold.

Notification preferences

We checked the ChannelMembers.NotifyProps values in the database.

For the affected channel, users have normal/default channel notification settings, for example:

{ "push": "default", "email": "default", "desktop": "default", "mark_unread": "all", "ignore_channel_mentions": "default" }

The same notification settings are used in other channels.

We also verified the global Users.NotifyProps.

At least one affected user has:

{ "desktop": "all", "desktop_sound": "true" }

Therefore, this user should receive desktop notifications for all new messages.

Additional information

The problem was noticed after upgrading to Mattermost 11.10.1.

The important distinction is that unread state itself appears to work correctly: the channel becomes bold immediately when a new message arrives.

The problem appears to affect notification generation/display and the unread badge/dot.

We have not found channel-specific notification settings that would explain this behavior.