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So the author both wants notifications and doesn’t want notifications.
Got it.
Sure sounds like a problem of their own making. And I find iOS’s notification taming rather simple to use. So I use it, and amazingly I have less notifications because of it!
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...
Install app. Start app. "Allow notifications?" No.
Does iOS not do this?
Apps that I do allow notifications: when they become annoying I go to the notification, long hold > settings > notification categories. If they only have one category and don't let me fine tune then I don't need that app or just don't need notifications from it. Back to settings I have other ways to customize that can make them less annoying like silence them.
The article has some valid points about wanting certain kinds of notifications from an app, and hating the spam notifications those apps send.
However, iOS does indeed allow you to grant or deny an app notifications permission on first launch, and my default is to always deny.
The only apps I allow notifications for are phone, calendar, messages, my tasks, and my automations (shortcuts and some associated apps)
iOS does that the first time you open the app. An app never opened can't send notifications (it wouldn't have registered).
I don't really have any issues with it. Samsung has very fine-grained controls and most apps I simply don't grant notification permissions at all. Also I put every single chat group in Whatsapp, Telegram etc on Mute by default which helps a lot against overload.
By the way, I give it a year or so by when phones can run a local AI to automatically filter the notifications you're interested in.
Yeah I feel like they neglected to show how much more of a problem on iOS this is than Android.
On Android apps typically have their push notifications divided into different types and can almost always turn off the marketing notifications for an app while leaving the important ones on.
I dont see even half of these notifications on Android.
On Android apps typically have their push notifications divided into different types and can almost always turn off the marketing notifications for an app while leaving the important ones on.
Oh, iOS doesn't have this? I didn't realise. Android has had this for a good few releases now and I love that.
For Android users Buzzkill is also great for apps that don't have granular enough notification settings. You can set up rules to make it automatically dismiss the notifications you don't want to see.
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.
I actually like these popups, but only if they're coming from notifications that I actually want to see. But it's really weird that the option to turn them off is only accessible via adb, even iOS has this feature.
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
True, not a personal human action though. I pretty much always want to see messages from people, but most of the time don't care about stream notifications
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
You guys still check notifications? I have Infinite Scroll of notifications I never care enough about to spend time on doing anything about.
I used to do this but it ended up in me missing notifications I actually cared about
The best solution is as someone else mentioned, just mute apps that send obnoxious notifications when you see them
Different notification sounds for different kinds of notifications has been big as well, one for messages, a different one for twitch streams, and another for everything else that normally gets ignored
That would be anxiety personified for me
Tell me more!
I wondered how I replied to my friends. Then I recalled that I don't have one.
Install Graphene OS or Lineage OS as notifications for the majority of apps require Google Play Services and completely are killed without them.
Or just turn notifications off in your OS of choice, if having no notifications is a solution for you.
The problem is that some notifications are useful, and so completely axing notifications isn’t a very good solution.