Some apps refuse to send notifications

[scrutinizer11]

Hello,

I tested my alerter copy against a swath of apps: "Music" won't show it, while others (Mail, FinalCut, Books, Grapher, VoiceOver utility, QuickTime Player) will. The only workaround was to drop "-sender" in favour of "-appIcon", but it displays a small binary icon, which I wanted to avoid for aesthetic reasons.

[vjeantet]

Hello ! This is the same root cause as #59.

Alerter uses the legacy NSUserNotificationCenter API (deprecated since macOS 10.14). The --sender option works by spoofing the bundle identifier of another app. On macOS Sequoia, Apple tightened restrictions: if the spoofed bundle ID belongs to an app that was never registered with the old NSUserNotificationCenter system, macOS silently drops the notification.

Apps like Music have been migrated to the modern UNUserNotificationCenter API, so they no longer work as a sender. Older system apps (Mail, FinalCut, QuickTime...) still work because they have a legacy registration.

There is no reliable fix within the current architecture - it depends on Apple's internal registration state per app. The workaround you found (--appIcon instead of --sender) is currently the best option.

The definitive fix is the migration to UNUserNotificationCenter, tracked in #61.

[scrutinizer11]

AFAIK, this has been an issue for many years, since Mavericks, the earliest. It plagued the same apps between OSX releases. Besides iTunes/Music, it used to be "Game Center" (when it was a standalone app) and FaceTime, which I forgot to mention in my OP.

[vjeantet]

which bundle ID do you use to mimick Music app ?

[scrutinizer11]

The official bundle id.

[vjeantet]

Please provide detailed examples; I just tested FaceTime and it works.

alerter --message "Test" --sender com.apple.facetime

[vjeantet]

com.apple.Music uses the new Notification framework, which is why it isn’t working with the current version.
With the work‑in‑progress alerter (dev in progress) it will work :

alerter_alpha --sender com.apple.Music test