Thanks for a bug report. Evolution uses libnotify for the notifications, at least some of those enable din Edit->Plugins->Mail Notification->Configuration. Which from the list do you have enabled, please? I suppose an uncheck of the "Show notification when a new mail arrives" will help.

It still can be something in the gnome-shell, its processing of incoming notifications. Evolution (usually) doesn't have a power to freeze whole desktop (and it doesn't do that intentionally for sure).

All three options are checked

"Notify new messages for Inbox only"
"Show notification when a new messages arrives"

oops. sausage fingers..


All three options are checked

"Notify new messages for Inbox only"
"Show notification when a new messages arrives"
"play sound when a new message arrives"

I'll try disabling the notification to see if that helps. I'm not actually sure it's the notification itself that is causing the problem but it always shows up just after the freeze.

What is selected under the Play sound option?

It's set to "beep" but I don't think I ever heard anything.

I tried to reproduce this here, but I didn't notice any UI freeze in the gnome-shell before a fake notification. I think you'll get better experience after changes from bug #735747 too.

I have it disabled now I think that might have solved the problem but it's hard to tell as unless I try to click stuff at the correct time I don't notice it.

Is there some way I could try to force a notification from evolution?

Not other than send an email to yourself, which would end in a folder where you've enabled notifications, like in an Inbox folder.

Same thing is happening to me every time I get an e-mail.

Disabling notification helped.

this is probably a duplicate of bug 749656

Thanks Ray, it really does. I'm marking this as a duplicate of it.

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 749656 ***

yes, it makes sense this would be more generic. I have since notice the same issue with notifications from one other application (spotify) as well.