Apple Watch Notifications - During Notification Event, Thumbnails Disappear. Is it a bug?

umnz
umnz
in SecuritySpy

Hi team,

I've thought for quite some time that maybe it was just my setup, but I'm now curious to know whether it is limited to my own experience or others are having the same issue when it comes to multiple event notifications and thumbnails on WatchOS 8.7.

In SS 5.5, 5.4 and as many prior versions as I can remember, when event notifications are generated by the system they are sent to your iPhone via the app which is then mirrored to your Apple Watch.

Now in my experience, the first notification for a detected event will display the thumbnail on the notification as it should, however, if it is followed by another notification within the same event cycle, the thumbnails for all events on the Apple Watch immediately have their thumbnails disabled to never return. This means you have to reach for the phone to see what's going on. Typically it's bad timing too, because normally multiple detections during an event cycle means someone is definitely loitering in zone where they shouldn't be and you may need to take action!

We've also noticed that if you review your notification history, the thumbnails are missing there, too.

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We've experimented a little bit and worked out that if there is an event (classified as detection event #1), followed by another event (classified as detection event #2) you will get a second notification, thumbnail included. But if there are multiple detections within the same event cycle (e.g. detection even #1) for some reason the second detection notification triggers all of the notification thumbnails to just disappear.

Anyone else found this? Are there workarounds? Is it a known limitation on WatchOS or something?

To be clear, iOS displays everything perfectly regardless of multiple events/detections. It is only WatchOS mirroring that is seemingly affected by it.

Thanks team!

Comments

  • Ben
    Ben

    I'm not immediately sure what could be causing this, it's not something we have come across before or something that has been reported by other users. This certainly seems like the watch is dumping these images for some specific reason (e.g. memory constraints, intentional design feature, bug in WatchOS). My first guess is that the watch has some frequency threshold for notifications from the same source, above which it will ignore attached images. Try reducing the rate at which notifications are sent by increasing the "Action reset time" in SecuritySpy under Preferences > Cameras > Actions, for all cameras that send notifications. Can you find a reset time (minimum time between successive notifications) that doesn't prompt this behaviour?

  • umnz
    umnz

    Hi Ben, sorry life has been busy and I was unable to respond to you after making adjustments based on your recommendation. Indeed, increasing the minimum time between successive notifications has decreased the frequency of this issue and we are now seeing significantly less "blank" notifications without thumbnails. Thank you.

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