... or are notifications just really bad on Android?
For background, we've got an old, sick, dog and my wife often needs to get help from me urgently. I'm still running an old Pixel 4a - it worked really well for me until Google crippled the battery and even now it works well enough that I'm not tempted to upgrade.
My notifications always seem to be delayed - in batches. I have 3 buildings on my property and each has a Nest doorbell. Some days I can be walking around and I'll constantly hear ding, ding, ding as I walk past each doorbell. Other days I can walk around and hear nothing, and then I'll get 5-10 notifications all at once.
Today was a perfect example of why this is so frustrating - I'm sitting at my desk with my phone in front of me. It's plugged in an charging. My phone starts ringing and it's my wife upset that I have not responded to her messages. I go help her with the dog and come back to my phone and sure enough, 8 minutes ago there's a notification from Google Chat, 6 minutes ago there's a notification from Google Messages and 4 minutes ago there's the phone call. The Google Chat and Google Messages notifications never came through - until the phone call came in!
I've been through and made sure that all the battery optimisations are turned off for all the apps that I want instant notifications from - but that shouldn't have any impact here - my phone was plugged in.
Is this normal Android? (kinda rhetorical question - I've been running Android since my Nexus 4 and don't think this is normal but it feels like it's somehow the "new" normal)
I'm not running the stock Pixel launcher - does the launcher get involved in notification delivery at all?
I'd look more into your data connection first. WiFi and Cell Data. That seems to be the primary source of delayed notifications in my personal experience.
I don't think that's it - the notifications are getting to my phone, Android is just not showing them to me. In the example today in my post - the notifications were timestamped 8 and 6 minutes ago, but there was no alert for them. And, I have good connectivity - especially today's example, sitting at my desk connected to my home wifi - which is good.
One option I've run into particularly with some self hosted systems is with notices going to the wrong one of multiple systems logged in. If you have several phones/tablets/computers using the same account notices can get twitchy. Could try killing of some old logins and reset this one to refresh the token it uses to keep you authed.
My phone does this sometimes on cellular data. Usually it's just my phone being an idiot. Check the power settings for the app, restart the phone and clear the cache for the app. That's what I do for my chat apps when it starts getting annoying