Delayed Watusi Notifications [Jailbreak]

This post is only for users using jailbroken devices and not a sideloaded IPA

2026 Update: This issue has resurfaced for many users. After thorough investigation by the community, the root cause is confirmed to be the same as in 2022: WhatsApp’s ServiceExtension exceeding its memory limit and getting killed by iOS Jetsam. This is not caused by Watusi — it happens even on stock WhatsApp with no tweaks injected. The sections below have been updated with new findings and a new fix.

The problem

A delay in receiving push notifications (or notifications not arriving at all, or contacts seeing only a single check mark) when WhatsApp is closed or in background. This first appeared after upgrading to WhatsApp 22.8.75 back in 2022, and has returned on recent WhatsApp versions as the app keeps growing in size.

Why?

WhatsApp’s ServiceExtension

After WhatsApp dropped support for iOS 9, they started using an application extension called ServiceExtension, responsible to receive push notifications from the server, decrypt them, store messages in database, send delivery receipts, and display notifications without the need to launch the application in background.

iOS Jetsam

iOS has a built-in process called Jetsam, it is responsible for limiting memory usage by other processes and terminating them when exceeding their limits.

Notification service extensions have a particularly strict limit: iOS enforces a fatal 24 MB per-process memory cap on them. The moment ServiceExtension crosses that limit while processing a push, Jetsam kills it instantly.

The notifications are getting delayed because ServiceExtension is getting killed by jetsam for exceeding its 24 MB memory limit, especially when there are multiple libraries and/or tweaks injected into it, or when WhatsApp itself needs more memory to process the notification.

In addition to WhatsApp’s frameworks (mainly Core.framework), many jailbreak tweaks will inject into all the system/user processes which can increase their memory usage and hit the limits.

It is not just Watusi. Community members ran extensive tests and reproduced the problem after fully removing Watusi and after changing Choicy and tweak-injection settings. The extension still hit the 24 MB limit. Recent WhatsApp builds have simply grown large enough that ServiceExtension approaches this cap on its own. For comparison, the notification extensions used by Telegram and Discord stay well under the limit, which is why they push notifications reliably. (Investigation shared by emmaflex.)

The chat backup factor

An important new finding: the size of your restored chat history has a direct effect. Multiple users reported that a fresh WhatsApp install with no backup delivered notifications normally, but after restoring their full iCloud/large chat history, ServiceExtension began approaching or exceeding the 24 MB limit and notifications broke again. This does not prove the backup alone is the cause — it points to an interaction between the extension’s workload, the restored data, and (for jailbroken users) the tweak-injection environment.

Why it varies between devices

This is why the same WhatsApp setup can behave completely differently across devices and users:

Newer devices / newer iOS (e.g. iOS 18) tend to handle the same WhatsApp and backup flawlessly.
iOS 16 and older are more likely to hit the limit, jailbroken or not.
Jailbroken devices carry the extra memory overhead of injected tweaks, so users who receive notifications fine while un-jailbroken may lose them once jailbroken.
Large chat backups push a borderline setup over the edge.

It’s a combination of factors happening at once, which is exactly why some users never experience it while others do.

You can inspect this yourself with a tool like CocoaTop (TrollStore) and watch the live memory usage of the ServiceExtension process. On affected setups it climbs toward 24 MB right before notifications stop arriving.

This is a known issue on iOS 13/14 jailbroken devices, where multiple system processes are crashing by jetsam. The reason why you see multiple crash reports inside Cr4shed tweak.

Once the extension is killed, the notifications will not be displayed and no delivery receipts will be sent to server (which is why your contacts will see just one check).

WhatsApp server will automatically resend all messages that are still not delieved to your device, which explains why you are receiving the notifications with a delay. They are now properly received after ServiceExtension is restarted with lower memory usage that does not hit jetsam limits.

Watusi also injects into ServiceExtension to have its features working properly, some of these features are:

Disable Delivery Receipts - these receipts are sent from this extension if the application is closed
Auto Reply - since WhatsApp is not launched when notifications are received, we need to handle active auto replies here
Hide Hidden Chats and Archive Lock notifications which are displayed from within the service extension
Private Notifications content can only be modified from there
Block Incoming Calls calls notifications are also displayed from this extension

Possible Solutions

Disable Tweak Injection

You can disable tweak injection into ServiceExtension using Choicy tweak which might help reducing memory usage from injected tweaks.

Disabling tweak injection will cause some of Watusi features (mentioned above) to not work properly.

Go to Choicy Settings > Applications > search and select WhatsApp
Click App Plugins and select ServiceExtension
Enable Disable Tweak Injection

You can also enable Custom Tweak Configuration and allow only Watusi libray to load.

Resetting WhatsApp Database

Some users were able to solve this issue by deleting WhatsApp and reinstalling a fresh copy without restoring a chats backup. This helps because WhatsApp is updating the database from within the ServiceExtension.

Raise the ServiceExtension Jetsam Limit (Recommended)

The community has released tweaks that fix this directly by raising the Jetsam memory limit of WhatsApp’s notification ServiceExtension — only that extension, not Jetsam globally or any other app. There are currently two options, both confirmed working on Dopamine:

FixWANotifs

A tweak by 0xkuj that raises the Jetsam memory limit of WhatsApp’s notification ServiceExtension so it is no longer killed while processing a push. A userspace reboot is required after installing.

GitHub: 0xkuj/FixWANotifs

WAJetsamFix

A tweak by Allukardh that raises the Jetsam memory limit of WhatsApp’s notification ServiceExtension from 24 MB to 40 MB so it is no longer killed while processing a push.

GitHub: Allukardh/WAJetsamFix-Release

Both tweaks target the ServiceExtension used by the official App Store WhatsApp. They have not been tested with WhatsApp installed via traditional sideloading or TrollStore — other IPAs may differ and could require adaptation. These are independent community projects and are not affiliated with or endorsed by Fouad’s Tweaks.

Summary

This issue is caused by WhatsApp’s ServiceExtension exceeding the fatal 24 MB memory limit that iOS enforces on notification extensions, after which Jetsam kills it and notifications are delayed, dropped, or delivered without a delivery receipt (a single check for your contacts).

The 2022 wave was triggered when WhatsApp moved more functionality into the ServiceExtension (especially after enabling the Linked Devices feature for everyone). The 2026 resurgence is the same mechanism — WhatsApp has simply kept growing until the extension approaches 24 MB on its own, made worse by large restored chat backups and, on jailbroken devices, injected tweaks.

To recap, the most effective options today are:

Dopamine users: install a tweak that raises the extension’s Jetsam limit — FixWANotifs or WAJetsamFix.
Everyone else: downgrade WhatsApp, disable tweak injection into ServiceExtension via Choicy, or reinstall without restoring a large backup.

Because it depends on device, iOS version, WhatsApp version, backup size, and tweak environment all at once, the same fix will not work identically for everyone. This problem also affects some non-jailbroken users on older devices and with large chat histories, which further confirms it originates from WhatsApp and iOS, not from Watusi.

Credits

Big thanks to the community members who investigated this and shared their fixes:

emmaflex — for the detailed investigation confirming the issue stems from WhatsApp’s ServiceExtension hitting the Jetsam limit (and the CocoaTop, chat-backup, and cross-device observations).
0xkuj — for FixWANotifs, which raises the extension’s Jetsam limit on Dopamine.
Allukardh — for WAJetsamFix, which raises the extension’s memory limit to 40 MB.