In 2020, developer Simon Lecoq faced a persistent problem in the Android custom ROM community: Reliable push notifications without Google Play Services or telemetry-heavy alternatives. His solution—UnifiedPush—has since grown from a personal project into a significant force in decentralized mobile infrastructure, recently marking its fifth anniversary with corporate backing and ambitions to reshape how devices receive messages.

The Genesis: Escaping Google's Grip

Lecoq's journey began with LineageOS and microG, but F-Droid's principled rejection of proprietary Google libraries left critical apps like Fedilab and Element without reliable notifications. Early experiments with Gotify led to the pivotal gotify-connector prototype. Crucially, collaboration in the OpenPush Matrix room—particularly with developer sparchatus—solidified the vision: A vendor-agnostic protocol where any push provider could serve any app.

"It was by chance that I started UnifiedPush," Lecoq reflects, "and the project would never have existed without other projects like F-Droid, Gotify, Matrix, FluffyChat or Fedilab."

Building Critical Mass: From Fediverse to Linux Desktops

Key milestones accelerated adoption:
- 2021: FluffyChat (Matrix) and Fedilab (Mastodon) became foundational early adopters, proving viability for real-time and federated messaging.
- Linux Expansion: vurpo's work porting the spec to D-Bus enabled KDE's KUnifiedPush (2022), bringing native notifications to Linux desktops.
- Distributor Diversity: Binwiederhier's ntfy joined as a recommended distributor alongside NextPush (NextCloud) and Conversations, replacing the discontinued Gotify implementation.

The Funding Inflection Point

By late 2023, with over 20 supported apps including Signal fork Flatline and Firefox forks Fennec/IronFox, UnifiedPush attracted institutional support:
- COVESA (Connected Vehicle Systems Alliance) backed development of enhanced security features like Web Push RFC8292 (VAPID) compliance.
- NLnet Foundation provided a grant enabling Lecoq to work full-time throughout 2024-2025, funding critical work on:
- Migration protocols for distributor failover
- Web Push implementation for Mastodon, Nextcloud, and SimpleX
- Anti-SSRF mechanisms to combat server spoofing

The goal? Creating a self-sustaining network effect: More apps drive user adoption, which pressures more developers to support the protocol.

Why This Matters Beyond FOSS Enthusiasts

UnifiedPush confronts systemic risks in centralized notification systems:
1. Surveillance Risks: Single-entity control over push infrastructure enables mass data collection.
2. Fragility: Service bans (regional blocks, device deprecation) create single points of failure.
3. Platform Risk: As Lecoq warns developers: "How fast could you recover from being banned by Google?"

The project demonstrates how decentralized alternatives can mitigate these threats without sacrificing functionality.

The Radical Endgame: Making UnifiedPush Obsolete

Lecoq's vision for 2029 isn't about dominance—it's about redundancy. He envisions Android adopting a Push Service API akin to its Credential Provider for passkeys:

"If Android gives us a system API to let the user define their push service we wouldn't need UnifiedPush anymore... Migration would be minimal."

This aspiration reframes success: Widespread adoption now pressures platform vendors to open their ecosystems, ultimately dissolving the need for workarounds. For Linux, growth hinges on mobile distributions maturing—an area where KDE's continued investment proves crucial.

With infrastructure gaps still to bridge on Linux and anti-SSRF work pending, UnifiedPush's story remains unfinished. But its first five years have proven something vital: When faced with platform lock-in, the open-source ecosystem can architect alternatives that don't just emulate—they innovate.

Source: Simon Lecoq's UnifiedPush Retrospective