Notification keeps spinning after inline Reply — how to dismiss it or stop the spinner?

[yst-one]

Question

About the Flet Notifications plugin: in the "Action buttons and replies" example, after I tap Reply and enter some text, the notification keeps spinning as if it's stuck. How can I dismiss the notification, or at least stop the spinner once the reply has been sent?

Code sample

No response

Error message

No response

------------------------------------------------------

• I have searched for answers to my question both in the issues and in previous discussions.

[ItsRenjiii]

The spinner is Android waiting for the app to confirm the reply. After an inline reply, Android keeps the notification alive (its flags show LIFETIME_EXTENDED_BY_DIRECT_REPLY) until the app posts an update to the same notification id. Until then cancel() is ignored, both cancel_notification=True and a manual notifications.cancel(id), which is why the example gets stuck. It's Android's documented flow (Retrieve the user reply), and the flutter_local_notifications maintainer confirms it in MaikuB/flutter_local_notifications#2620.

Fix: in on_action, call show() again with the same id (e.id):

async def handle_action(e: ftn.NotificationActionEvent):
    if e.action_id == "reply" and e.id is not None:
        # Confirms the reply to Android and stops the spinner.
        await notifications.show(
            id=e.id, title="Ada", body=f"You: {e.input}", payload=e.payload
        )
    ...

That replaces the reply UI with your updated text, like chat apps showing your sent message. If you'd rather the notification disappear completely, cancel it after the update, with a short pause so the update lands first:

        await notifications.show(id=e.id, title="Ada", body="Sent", payload=e.payload)
        await asyncio.sleep(0.5)
        await notifications.cancel(e.id)

I tested all of this on an Android 16 emulator with flet 1.1.2 / flet-notifications 1.1.2:

• The current example stays stuck.
• cancel() alone is ignored: from on_action, later, or via foreground=False.
• Re-posting with the same id clears it straight away.
• Re-posting and then cancelling 0.5 s later removes it. Cancelling immediately after the re-post doesn't work, because it races the update.

I've also opened #7060, which fixes the "Action buttons and replies" example and adds this to the NotificationActionInput and cancel_notification docs.

If this fixes it for you, please Mark as answer so others with the same problem can find it. Thanks!

[ndonkoHenri]

To add to this: the snippet above works on Android 16, but two things are worth changing.

• Pass only_alert_once=True on the update. Without it, the update rings and vibrates again.
• Set cancel_notification=False on the Reply action. On Android 15 and earlier, the default True dismisses the notification right after the reply, so the update posts a brand-new notification that alerts. With False, no version dismisses it and the update replaces it silently.

ftn.NotificationAction(
    id="reply",
    title="Reply",
    input=ftn.NotificationActionInput(label="Message"),
    cancel_notification=False,
)


async def handle_action(e: ftn.NotificationActionEvent):
    if e.action_id == "reply" and e.page.platform == ft.PagePlatform.ANDROID:
        await notifications.show(
            id=e.id,
            title="Ada",
            body=f"You: {e.input}",
            payload=e.payload,
            options=ftn.NotificationOptions(
                android=ftn.AndroidOptions(
                    only_alert_once=True,
                    # Optional: removes it after a second, instead of the sleep + cancel().
                    timeout_after=ft.Duration(seconds=1),
                )
            ),
        )

The Android check matters because other platforms dismiss the notification themselves after a reply. #7060 updates the example and the docs to match.