Ad notifications are not displayed on macOS Catalina

[tmancey]

Description

Steps to Reproduce

Prerequisite: Install macOS Catalina

1. Enable Ads
2. Navigate to www.brave.com

Actual result:

Ad notification is not shown

Expected result:

Ad notification should be shown

Reproduces how often:

Easily reproduced

Brave version (brave://version info)

All

Version/Channel Information:

• Can you reproduce this issue with the current release? Yes
• Can you reproduce this issue with the beta channel? Yes
• Can you reproduce this issue with the dev channel? Yes
• Can you reproduce this issue with the nightly channel? Yes

Other Additional Information:

• Does the issue resolve itself when disabling Brave Shields? N/A
• Does the issue resolve itself when disabling Brave Rewards? N/A
• Is the issue reproducible on the latest version of Chrome? N/A

Miscellaneous Information:

Ad notifications are displayed as native notifications using an XPC service, allowing different types of alert styles to be displayed.

The XPC service is incompatible with macOS Catalina for different types of alert styles.

A workaround is to disable native notifications for Brave Browser on macOS Catalina until the native notifications platform bridge has been updated to support this new operating system.

Custom notifications are displayed if brave://flags/#enable-native-notifications is Disabled or the operating system does not support native notifications.

Additional sanity testing is required to make sure Ad notifications work as expected with custom notifications.

Custom notifications will not be displayed in the macOS Notification Center, which is likely less of a concern due to Ads history is available from the Rewards panel.

[eljuno]

+1s from Twitter

https://twitter.com/IceBlueDesigns/status/1183856104029057024?s=09

https://twitter.com/JonSpeek/status/1184274931741118465?s=09

+1s from Community

https://community.brave.com/t/brave-ad-notifications-not-showing-on-mac/88491?u=eljuno

https://community.brave.com/t/brave-browser-not-showing-ads-after-update-to-macos-catalina/89929?u=eljuno

macOS Catalina 10.15
Brave version 0.69.135 Chromium: 77.0.3865.120 (Official Build) (64-bit)

[Brave-Matt]

From Community -- several users reporting:
https://community.brave.com/t/upgrade-to-catalina-stopped-rewards/87211/8

[tmancey]

TODO(crbug.com/1007418): Show all notifications as alerts on macOS as a temporary workaround. NSUserNotificationAlertStyle has been changed to "alert" in "src/chrome/app/app-info.plist". If the notification is non-persistent remove the notification after 5 seconds to emulate banners, as a side-effect notifications will not minimize to the notification centre. Brave ads are dismissed within AdsServiceImpl

[kjozwiak]

Verification PASSED on macOS 10.15.1 x64 using the following build:

Brave	0.71.111 Chromium: 78.0.3904.87 (Official Build) (64-bit)
Revision	20c21f4010010f32462ea8e1d6af30cef66d48c8-refs/branch-heads/3904@{#840}
OS	macOS Version 10.15.1 (Build 19B88)

• ensured that ad notifications are being displayed when using Banners from Notifications via the macOS System Preferences:

• ensured that ad notifications are being displayed when using Alerts from Notifications via the macOS System Preferences:

• ensured that ad notifications are being displayed when using None from Notifications via the macOS System Preferences:

Noticed that ad notifications disappear from the notification tray after ~2mins. This has been an issue for a while and not related to this change. Added comments via #5628 (comment).