I realized at somepoint I was ignoring everything on my phone because of the number of notifications. Now I disable EVERYTHING and only leave important stuff. I wish this was the default.
I did the same many months ago, though I suspect I may need to redo as I’ve been getting some really long notification piles when I don’t check my phone for a day…
How do people struggle with notifications? This is even weirder than the ad-blocking thing, because at least you are required to find and install a third party app to solve that. Every app ever has notification settings built-in. Just take 20 seconds out of your day to setup the app correctly when you first install it and you will likely never have to worry about it again.
You might have found out if you bothered to read the discussion before sharing your opinion.
Your “rhetorical question” and objections you raised were already answered in this thread before you raised them.
were already answered
It sounds like you still don’t understand what a rhetorical question is.
What does this thread add to the discussion?
(this is not rhetorical)
Why are you asking me? I’m not the one accusing others of “nOt rEaDiNg dA tHrEaD bEfOrE u AsKeD a qUeStOn”. My top level reply was on-topic. No one has actually provided an on-topic reply to it yet.
Seems you’re the one who doesn’t understand what a rhetorical question is. Hint - it’s not what you retrospectively call a question when you get called out on your laziness.
Nor is it rhetorical when you ask a question and then spend several lines going on about it, and making it clear that you really did want to talk about an answer.
it’s not what you retrospectively call a question when you get called out on your laziness.
Didn’t happen.
Nor is it rhetorical when you ask a question and then spend several lines going on about it, and making it clear that you really did want to talk about an answer.
Also didn’t happen.
Schrodinger’s rhetorical question is when you decide whether your question was rhetorical or not based on people’s reaction to it.
Both on Android, and iOS, opting out of notifications solves most of the problems. You can do all on your own time without constant nagging, and leave notifications on for the communication channels you really need.
However, what I hate with passion are shopping and delivery apps that suffer with disabled notifications (I don’t know when things arrive, and that would ideally be good to know within seconds), but enabled notifications mean that there would be a lot of spam notifications about ordering and buying more.
Some apps let you customize notifications, some let the OS customize them… some get muted, and some uninstalled.
For example, Amazon lets you keep the account and delivery notifications, but disable the promotional ones.
Yeah, no way to lose my trust faster than abusing your notification privileges to send me spam.
AliExpress is the worst at this. Which category should I disable? AliExpress, aliexpress, Chat or message push? And even if I figured it out, there’s no way to stop store spammers from sending you useless messages constantly, detracting from actual sellers with questions.
My second proposal — and this is a wild one — is that promotional notifications should just not be allowed. Or you can opt in to them if you desperately want to hear from the Starbucks app every single day, but you should have to go out of your way to do that and should not be the default behavior when you choose “allow notifications.” Just an idea!
The author calls out the Starbucks app here, but doesn’t mention how blatantly dark-patterned its notifications really are. Android allows apps to set up multiple notification channels, so you can selectively prioritize (or, more often, mute or block) notifications based on their content. Starbucks uses this feature… to create a single channel called “Promotions & order status”. You wanted to know when your order’s ready? Fuck you and your concentration, get double stars today!
I appreciate the notification controls Android gives me, and I use them aggressively. If an app pushes a notification that doesn’t actually require my attention, I block that channel, and if it does it again, I block notifications for the whole app. I agree with the author, though: I shouldn’t need to do that.
Why do you feel the need to install an app for a coffee shop?
Not OP but I often get 50% off promo for any beverage from Starbucks app.
Email subscriptions also sometimes have that, with bonus points for several vague and similar sounding categories, and emails not mentioning what category they’re in.
The use of a single channel should be against the rules for commerce apps.
They’d probably get around that by having a ‘Promotions and Order status’ channel and a random / unused one like an ‘App update available’ channel. Promotional notifications should just really be banned.
It should be enough for the Play Store to require any promotional notifications to go to an exclusively promotional channel for users to manage as they please.
Next stage, would be a “report notification” option, so Google could suspend the app for spamming. That would curb the dark pattern behavior quite quickly.
Whenever I get an ad in my notifications I make it a point to rate 1 star, may not do anything at all really but still feels nice to do
On android long press a notification and it’ll show you which category of notification it is from that app, with the ability to disable just that one category if desired. E.g. advertisements and feedback reminders
Some apps don’t export the category, but still let you disable it from inside the app. In my book, they get a close pass.
The Amazon app, which for many years has faithfully executed its legitimate role as an app that helps me order stuff and track those orders, recently sent me a notification to let me know it thinks I might like some JBL headphones.
It made me furious. How dare they?
At least they normally let you selectively disable promotions
Really? That’s handy. Is that an Amazon config option or an iOS config option?
I’m not sure about on iOS, on android if you long press on any notification and go to disable it there are a bunch of toggleable notification categories
Notification controls on android are pretty great in my experience.
Most apps (good ones anyway) breakdown different types of notifications, and you can turn off the ones you don’t want. And if they don’t, you can just turn off all notifications for that app entirely.
It all works pretty well.
On Android you need to opt in to notifications for every app you install. Just opt out :)
Or, be like me and keep your phone on do not disturb(except calls from contacts). Doing this was one of the most significant quality of life improvements for me over the last few years.
Yeah that’s what I’ve done. I’ve gotten very picky about which apps I allow to notify me of things. A week or two of turning off all the ones you don’t want and your phone gets quiet real quick.
For me, apps do not get to notify me unless it’s time sensitive.
The problem is when my food delivery app, or LinkedIn sends me ads when I just want messages.
It’s annoying to not be able to only receive messages.
LinkedIn has messages? Maybe I don’t use it much, but it seemed like it had ads, and self-promoting messages, or more ads.
Aren’t messages the only point of LinkedIn? You create a profile which is basically your CV, set it to “looking for work”, and wait for recruiters to message you, right?
I’ve switched off the “looking for work” after the n-th recruiter who hadn’t even bothered reading my profile. I was under the impression that LinkedIn should also work as a social network for people to “word of mouth” recommend each other, or openings at wherever they work, but all I got was “coach” and “courses” type spam.
That is the trouble with relying on recruiters, there’s essentially no bar to entry so the industry is flooded with talentless chancers
Out of my 10000 notifications I ignore, there’s one message… and that’s from the LinkedIn team.
Yeah, I needed to have it on for a week for work stuff. And it kept giving me random notifications about news and stuff. I couldn’t figure it out.
Apps get a one strike rule. The minute I get a notification I don’t want, that app doesn’t get to send me notifications anymore
I use Tasker to filter out notifications
Buzzkill is another good one.
I turned off all notifications for every app except Signal
I do a similar thing, enabling only the apps I want notifications, and I run “adb shell settings put global heads_up_notifications_enabled 0” to stop those annoying popups interrupting me. This should have been an option available in the configs, imo.
Just turn them off? That’s what I do, my phone never annoys me.
BuzzKill is great for wrangling your notifications. Match a word or phrase and group them, snooze them, set special vibration patterns, whatever.
If you’re on IOS, the Focus feature is great. I use it primarily for sleep to turn off all notifications except for calls (in case of emergencies). But you can basically configure multiple profiles with different notification settings. Also, whenever I install a new app on my phone, I turn notifications off unless it’s a time sensitive app like a messaging app.
That’s interesting and I’ve never heard of the focus feature (I don’t use my phone very much). Where do I find the focus feature?
I was going to try to explain it, but realized I’m not very good at calling menus and such their proper names. So whatever I tell you wouldn’t be very helpful.
https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/turn-a-focus-on-or-off-iph5c3f5b77b/ios
Apple also has a YouTube video that’s about 5 minutes long. The article is probably faster.
I’m not a power user, so I don’t use the majority of features on my phone. I generally set my “do not disturb” at bedtime. It allows calls through from my favorite contact list and my morning alarm. I have friends that set focus time and they love it.
Edit to add to the conversation. I disable all notifications, except for things I really want: calls, FaceTime, texts and to update my food diary if I haven’t done so before 2pm.
When I need to use Uber, I just keep watch on the app. I guess I’m a bit of a psychopath. But when I’m waiting for a car, I like to watch it move on the map. There’s nothing else I would use that would need me to have a notification.
Thanks so much!
Seconding the use of this feature as well. I took it a bit further and took 5 minutes to set up a “Personal” focus mode, active only in the weekends where all work-related apps, mail, calls, etc. cannot send me notifications. In my work there are some serious boundary issues, so this helps me a lot with anxiety and stress.
My work phone is an iPhone and I love this feature. The moment it’s past work hours I no longer get buzzed for any notifications, and I only see direct messages on the home screen
Android’s Do Not Disturb feature is also like this. You only get notifications from calls, alarms and apps you specifically allow.
My rule has always been people can notify me, but bots/apps cannot. If I see a notification not from a person, it gets disabled. If it’s something I can practically do on a website, I don’t download the app.
This except for twitch streams
That’s a human action anyway though… Not a “it’s been a while since you opened our app time to drag you back” notification
