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If I could ask Apple for one thing it would be to require approval of every push notification that an app developer wants to deliver. That an app gets either ca

If I could ask Apple for one thing it would be to require approval of every push notification that an app developer wants to deliver. That an app gets either cart blanche to send me notifications or nothing at all drives me crazy. I don't want to miss a notification that my delivery food arrived, but I don't want to be bombarded with daily advertising messages from foodpanda trying to get me to change my behavior. Require app developers to submit a template string (and not "\(message)") for each notification the app can deliver for approval in the App Store and let me have an on/off switch for each one. "Notifications" across every platform drive me crazy, because they usually start out as useful, but because people tend to pay them more attention than all the other channels that have already been tuned out, companies start juicing them for engagement. I use twitter rarely, but every time I do I am perplexed why my "notifications" are full of crap about who recently tweeted. Shouldn't that just be in my timeline?

bengale 5y ago
Something really should be done about this. The food delivery apps are worst for this, they seem to know you can't turn alerts off without losing a key feature, but then use it to advertise. They should be made to split this out so you can turn one off without the other. I'd love to customise the alert level for news apps. I would leave on actually important breaking news, but I have to turn it all off because they bombard me with worthless stuff. I want to know if the PMs head explodes, but I really don't care which royal has had another baby.
- eloisius 5y ago
  Agreed. It seems short-sighted of Apple to let notifications become an advertising channel. It works against their customers. A start could be requiring developers to categorize their notifications as transactional or advertising, but I'd really like the granularity to switch certain types of notifications on and off from the Settings app, or on the "manage" menu of the notification itself have the option to not get notifications like this one anymore.
- latch 5y ago
  > The food delivery apps are worst for this My bank, which is otherwise great, does this. Critically important push notifications and a pretty steady stream of meaningless advertisement.
  - andai 5y ago
    What kind of important notifications does your bank send? I don't think I've gotten a single notification from my bank about anything. They do still send paper mail though.
    - alex-yark 5y ago
      Several of my bank apps will send me push notifications when a payment requires 2fa so I can authorise in app, a much better process than the SMS based 2fa most do.
      - Red_Leaves_Flyy 5y ago
        How often does your bank flag your transactions? I’ve been called once in a decade to authorize a tx.
        dm33tri 5y ago
        In my country we confirm every transaction with 2FA, if the site supports secure payments (almost every website)
        alistairSH 5y ago
        Sigh. I wish the US would encourage this. It would make me feel so much more confident about fraud prevention.
        05 5y ago
        EU caps card interchange fees (.3% credit .2% debit), so the baseline is lower. US has comparably huge card rewards, those have to come from somewhere, so with 1.5-3% interchange fees the incentive to implement 2FA to cut, say, 0.2% off commission is just not there..
- neither_color 5y ago
  I get around this by only enabling notifications when I order food, and then disabling notifications after delivery. It's a few extra steps but worth the serenity.
grishka 5y ago
It's more interesting in Android. There's no notification permission, as every app is able to send notifications by default. But, there are notification categories. You can turn them off individually. Yes, the app developer is supposed to specify them themselves. And most actually do. Those who don't drive me nuts tho. I'm very careful with what I receive notifications about. Apple could definitely copy that. Right now the iOS notification system is useless because of how overwhelmed you get with everything and how notifications disappear by themselves when you unlock the phone.
- andai 5y ago
  >notifications disappear by themselves when you unlock the phone I get a bunch of messages from my friend on Steam, so I tap to read them, but if I tap the wrong way it opens the app instead, makes all the messages disappear, and I have to wait until I get to a place with internet again before I can see what he said.
  - Cheetah26 5y ago
    I'd partially blame this one on the Steam app too. If it is able to receive the message and give you a notification, it should also let you see that message in-app without internet. Discord is the same way and it drives me mad, especially considering how fussy it can be about connecting. Snapchat on the other hand handles it right. If I get a notification (for an actual chat at least), I am able to open it anytime later regardless of whether or not my phone is still connected.
  - grishka 5y ago
    I've been using Android for around 10 years. I'm very much used to using the notification shade like a to-do list: I often leave non-urgent notifications to hang in there to deal with them later. Another thing that drives me absolutely nuts in iOS, and that stems form its lack of a usable notification system, is that it considers it okay to interrupt your train of thought with modal alerts. When your battery gets low, you get an alert in your face. When there's a system update, you get an alert in your face when you unlock the device (and then an annoying, very dark-pattern-y "enter your passcode to install overnight" screen). When there's any number of things about Apple services you couldn't care less about, you get an alert in your face, too. On (stock) Android, all these things are notifications that can be ignored for as long as you desire.
k3liutZu 5y ago
> I don't want to miss a notification that my delivery food arrived, but I don't want to be bombarded with daily advertising messages from foodpanda trying to get me to change my behavior. Yeah, this really drives me crazy.
- rattray 5y ago
  I use Android, which lets you enable/disable particular notification categories. I've simply uninstalled all food delivery apps that send promotions using the "General" category (IIRC Grubhub was the work offender). Uber Eats and DoorDash categorize their promotional notifications appropriately, so I never see them (and do get notifs about my deliveries).
wilde 5y ago
Apple also abuses push notifications to sell their services so I don’t see this ending any time soon :(
- Ensorceled 5y ago
  I can't remember an Apple push notification that wasn't transactional or an update notification (which is also transcational I guess). Do you have an example?
  - eloisius 5y ago
    "Helpful" tips when you get a new iPhone for one example. I also think I vaguely remember being very surprised that Photos advertised to me about being able to buy printed photo albums or something like that once? But I may be mis-remembering it with Google Photos.
  - jacurtis 5y ago
    They push Apple Music promos from time to time. They also send notifications via the Apple Store app about new product releases. To be fair, they don't ABUSE it to the extent that it happens frequently. But they are still promotional messages I didn't want. I'd say they send 6-8 per year. The Apple "Tips" app sends TONS of messages too. Granted that can be fixed by deleting the app. But people like my Mom still gets those messages to this day because she doesn't realize they are tied to that app and I don't believe they are opt-in, I think they are opt-out, meaning they are enabled on new phones by default (like Messages app and your Phone app). I know everyone here has deleted that app, but I bet most of our parents or children still have it installed and still get those messages. The funny thing about this comment in general is that many people probably don't realize they get notifications from Apple either. But as I mention examples they probably think, "Oh yeah, I've gotten those too". That is the biggest problem. We get so many notifications that many of us simply forget them. You get a notification that the new Macbook Pro is released and you simply read it on the backthread of your brain and dismiss it without much intentional thought. That is how Notifications have become for people. I tried to get my mom to clear up her notifications recently and she simply doesn't think about it anymore. It is just something you deal with if you own a modern phone. It isn't something you control. Like how you don't really control the billboards that you see while commuting to work. You can't disable billboards (other than actively driving to avoid them). But you brain doesn't dwell on them either. You are aware of their presence, but don't expel energy to digest every one. Notifications have become the same way. But they shouldn't be that way. We can (technologically speaking) disable them and the tools to disable them or control them should be granted to smartphone users.
jasonkester 5y ago
Personally, I just want a global setting for "Apps can send notifications" that I can turn off. Every app that I install, I have to go through the same routine of finding and killing all the various types of notifications it tries to send me. But I don't want apps to notify me of things. Ever. I'll check my email a few times a day, and the various messenger apps once every few weeks, and they will have a list of new messages. I'm fine with the phone ringing when one of my contacts calls. But that's the full extent of where I'm prepared to allow it to distract me.
- joenot443 5y ago
  On iOS, apps needs to ask permission before they send notifications. If you missed that, there's also a single toggle in Settings -> Notifications for each app. There's no situation where you should have to "kill all the various types of notifications". While I agree a global "Disable Notifications" toggle would be nice, I don't think it's too much work to just tap "Don't Allow" when an app initially prompts you? The iOS notification ecosystem is actually miles better than it was in the iOS 4-10 days, I think it's fairly user respectful now.
  - manmal 5y ago
    There are also trial notifications, which only show up in notification center. Every app can just do that without any permission. https://developer.apple.com/documentation/usernotifications/asking_permission_to_use_notifications https://developer.apple.com/documentation/usernotifications/...
- sxg 5y ago
  Am I misunderstanding? Isn’t this already possible on iOS? You can either disable notifications for individual apps or just turn on Do Not Disturb mode and leave it on. Fairly sure there is a setting to allow phone calls.
alickz 5y ago
>I don't want to miss a notification that my delivery food arrived, but I don't want to be bombarded with daily advertising messages from foodpanda trying to get me to change my behavior. This is exactly what the Android notification channels allow you to do, and it actually works really well. For UberEats I have the Delivery notification channel enabled, but the Marketing channel disabled. It's really the best of both worlds. And even more surprisingly it seems most apps support this, instead of putting all notifications under one channel. I'm surprised Apple hasn't followed suit; NIH syndrome maybe?
- kamilner 5y ago
  In UberEats (and many other apps) you can configure which push notifications you get. Is that functionally different than channels for the purposes of turning off marketing notifications? Both seem to rely on the App developer allowing you to turn off the notifications you don't want. The problem I have are the apps which don't allow that, which presumably also wouldn't allow to separate them into channels for the same reason they don't let you turn them off.
  - anchpop 5y ago
    A difference is that there's a unified UI for disabling channels, and app developers don't have to do anything except annotate each notification with the channel it belongs to and list the channels somewhere in their manifest (IIRC). If you get a notification you don't like, you long long-press it and a menu appears showing you the different notification channels and prompting you to enable or disable them.
    - eropple 5y ago
      I haven't used Android in a while. What stops a developer from not categorizing notifications and effectively saying "oh they're all General notifications, ha ha ha, you can't get the thing you want without all the slop"?
      - perryizgr8 5y ago
jaywalk 5y ago
I really like this idea, but template strings won't work for things like news of any type.
rpxio 5y ago
It looks like they’re adding interruption levels with iOS 15: https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guidelines/ios/system-capabilities/notifications/ https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guideline... See “Helping People Manage Notifications” section.
- criddell 5y ago
  That will be abused like crazy. Every marketing notification will be accompanied by an "order now to get 5% off your order" message so it can be classified as time sensitive.
  - eloisius 5y ago
    Looks like they address that: > Never designate a marketing notification as Time Sensitive. For guidance, see Helping People Manage Notifications. Although I'm not clear on whether this are just HIG guidelines for notifications or if they are enforceable App Store rules.
    - iaml 5y ago
      App store rules are a joke, a lot of apps should be banned for violating them, but apple just doesn't give a fuck - and there aren't even proper channels to complain about it.
  - irae 5y ago
    Potential abuse is not a reason for not doing this feature. Bad actors will be bad in the current system or the new one. A couple of years ago: Allow all or no notifications, hard to find settings to turn off Current: Allow all, but easy to manage from home screen, apps that want to offer a choice of types of notification must figure out how, create config UI, make sure system is stable. Users must find, and each app is different and often report options are not working iOS 15: A general framework that at the code level, each notification can declare. iOS unifies the UI for managing levels per app. Good actors will have lower costs, bad actors can be detected in device predictions. I only see benefits, and you can still block apps abusing it
cheph 5y ago
> If I could ask Apple for one thing it would be to require approval of every push notification that an app developer wants to deliver. Personally I would ask them to stop glad-handing with china and using their slave labour. But that is just me.
- eloisius 5y ago
  Okay, fair. I'd ask for an iPhone that was not dependent upon China's labor and supply chains first, then to give me granular control of notifications.
tristor 5y ago
Agreed with this entirely. The worst offender to me is Booking.com which will pop notifications and badges (I'm a compulsive badge clearer) on my device for marketing stuff, when I really only want notifications for messages in app around reservations. It also has added insult to injury during this pandemic season as Booking has continued to run promos and pop them when there's no reasonable way I could travel.
sonofhans 5y ago
Ooh, I agree. Amazon does this, too. I had notifications enabled in their mobile app for a while. I work in a cottage behind my house, so it’s useful to get a notification when something’s delivered. Sure enough, after about half a dozen deliveries they started spamming me with promo messages as well. I quickly turned off notifications. As usual, spammers ruin everything.
- DrBenCarson 5y ago
  Try https://shop.app https://shop.app it’s absolutely great for the use case you described! You can even login to Amazon directly from the iOS shop app.
drewg123 5y ago
The food apps are so bad that I typically uninstall them when they send me a spammy notification, and then re-install them when I need to use them again. The natural outcome of this is that the first app which does NOT send me spam will be the one on my phone when I want to order food, and will be the one I actually use.
Abishek_Muthian 5y ago
Notification pollution is real and I'm glad Apple is taking real steps to address it in the form of the new focus feature which lets the message sender determine whether to alert the user. I've been asking for this for a long time[1], But it shouldn't be only for 'Do Not Disturb' but rather for every message. I don't want to be alerted for meme or forwarded messages, Letting the users determine the notification level - Delayed (to be notified when I check the phone) or Immediate can go a long way to habituate message etiquette. As for non messaging apps like you mentioned, They should be shamed in the 'Notification Pollution' panel. [1]https://needgap.com/problems/59-notification-pollution-mobile-productivity https://needgap.com/problems/59-notification-pollution-mobil...
EGreg 5y ago
How about just making notifications costly? Maybe even rev-share with users.
asiachick 5y ago
agreed. my dating apps I obviously want to leave notifications on so I get notified of a new match but the company uses notification to try to get me to use the app more and I can't turn those off. Similarly the Meetup app has started spamming me with Meetup.com blog type info with no way to turn it off but I need the notifications on for meetups . this one in particular is odd given than the Meetup app has some of the most granular notification settings of any service out there. The Lyft app does this a few times a year as well.
SergeAx 5y ago
It is called FilterBox on Android. But Apple will never allow such an app on iOS, no way.
00deadbeef 5y ago
This kind of thing is already against the App Store Review Guidelines: > Push Notifications should not be used for promotions or direct marketing purposes unless customers have explicitly opted in to receive them via consent language displayed in your app’s UI, and you provide a method in your app for a user to opt out from receiving such messages. Abuse of these services may result in revocation of your privileges. Apple has now introduced a way for developers to report other apps that break the guideiness. Rest assured I will be making reports every time an app sends me advertisement notifications that I did not opt in to.
mustacheemperor 5y ago
I just want the ability to time-gate notifications. It's convenient that I can shut off notifications from Teams when I'm on vacation, but why isn't it possible to disable notifications from Teams between 6pm-6am and on the weekends? Why can't I disable push notifications from my work email on Saturday and Sunday? It's the one single quality of life feature I've most hoped to see in every iOS update since they introduced granular notification control.
- Bluecobra 5y ago
  The Teams iOS app already has this. Go to Settings > Notifications > Block Notifications > During Quiet Time, then specify what hours you want the app to be quiet.
coastal-fiesta 5y ago
I was so glad to see iOS offer the ability to grant apps access to a subset of your photo library, rather than your entire photo library or nothing at all. I hope they take this approach with notifications too.
matheusmoreira 5y ago
This would be an amazing feature!!
graphenus 5y ago
What you probably really want is to see a choice right after ordering some food: "Enable foodpanda notifications?" with options "enable", "keep disabled", and "enable for 2 hours".
HeavyStorm 5y ago
This. I mean, technically (or operationally) that's a challenge, but I hate that they use the same permission to bug me with ads and send me ultra important information. Oh, and my phone runs android. :)

bengale 5y ago

Something really should be done about this. The food delivery apps are worst for this, they seem to know you can't turn alerts off without losing a key feature, but then use it to advertise. They should be made to split this out so you can turn one off without the other. I'd love to customise the alert level for news apps. I would leave on actually important breaking news, but I have to turn it all off because they bombard me with worthless stuff. I want to know if the PMs head explodes, but I really don't care which royal has had another baby.

eloisius 5y ago
Agreed. It seems short-sighted of Apple to let notifications become an advertising channel. It works against their customers. A start could be requiring developers to categorize their notifications as transactional or advertising, but I'd really like the granularity to switch certain types of notifications on and off from the Settings app, or on the "manage" menu of the notification itself have the option to not get notifications like this one anymore.
latch 5y ago
> The food delivery apps are worst for this My bank, which is otherwise great, does this. Critically important push notifications and a pretty steady stream of meaningless advertisement.
- andai 5y ago
  What kind of important notifications does your bank send? I don't think I've gotten a single notification from my bank about anything. They do still send paper mail though.
  - alex-yark 5y ago
    Several of my bank apps will send me push notifications when a payment requires 2fa so I can authorise in app, a much better process than the SMS based 2fa most do.
    - Red_Leaves_Flyy 5y ago
      How often does your bank flag your transactions? I’ve been called once in a decade to authorize a tx.
      - dm33tri 5y ago
        In my country we confirm every transaction with 2FA, if the site supports secure payments (almost every website)
        alistairSH 5y ago
        Sigh. I wish the US would encourage this. It would make me feel so much more confident about fraud prevention.
        05 5y ago
        EU caps card interchange fees (.3% credit .2% debit), so the baseline is lower. US has comparably huge card rewards, those have to come from somewhere, so with 1.5-3% interchange fees the incentive to implement 2FA to cut, say, 0.2% off commission is just not there..
neither_color 5y ago
I get around this by only enabling notifications when I order food, and then disabling notifications after delivery. It's a few extra steps but worth the serenity.

grishka 5y ago

It's more interesting in Android. There's no notification permission, as every app is able to send notifications by default. But, there are notification categories. You can turn them off individually. Yes, the app developer is supposed to specify them themselves. And most actually do. Those who don't drive me nuts tho. I'm very careful with what I receive notifications about. Apple could definitely copy that. Right now the iOS notification system is useless because of how overwhelmed you get with everything and how notifications disappear by themselves when you unlock the phone.

andai 5y ago
>notifications disappear by themselves when you unlock the phone I get a bunch of messages from my friend on Steam, so I tap to read them, but if I tap the wrong way it opens the app instead, makes all the messages disappear, and I have to wait until I get to a place with internet again before I can see what he said.
- Cheetah26 5y ago
  I'd partially blame this one on the Steam app too. If it is able to receive the message and give you a notification, it should also let you see that message in-app without internet. Discord is the same way and it drives me mad, especially considering how fussy it can be about connecting. Snapchat on the other hand handles it right. If I get a notification (for an actual chat at least), I am able to open it anytime later regardless of whether or not my phone is still connected.
- grishka 5y ago
  I've been using Android for around 10 years. I'm very much used to using the notification shade like a to-do list: I often leave non-urgent notifications to hang in there to deal with them later. Another thing that drives me absolutely nuts in iOS, and that stems form its lack of a usable notification system, is that it considers it okay to interrupt your train of thought with modal alerts. When your battery gets low, you get an alert in your face. When there's a system update, you get an alert in your face when you unlock the device (and then an annoying, very dark-pattern-y "enter your passcode to install overnight" screen). When there's any number of things about Apple services you couldn't care less about, you get an alert in your face, too. On (stock) Android, all these things are notifications that can be ignored for as long as you desire.

k3liutZu 5y ago

rattray 5y ago
I use Android, which lets you enable/disable particular notification categories. I've simply uninstalled all food delivery apps that send promotions using the "General" category (IIRC Grubhub was the work offender). Uber Eats and DoorDash categorize their promotional notifications appropriately, so I never see them (and do get notifs about my deliveries).

wilde 5y ago

Apple also abuses push notifications to sell their services so I don’t see this ending any time soon :(

Ensorceled 5y ago
I can't remember an Apple push notification that wasn't transactional or an update notification (which is also transcational I guess). Do you have an example?
- eloisius 5y ago
  "Helpful" tips when you get a new iPhone for one example. I also think I vaguely remember being very surprised that Photos advertised to me about being able to buy printed photo albums or something like that once? But I may be mis-remembering it with Google Photos.
- jacurtis 5y ago
  They push Apple Music promos from time to time. They also send notifications via the Apple Store app about new product releases. To be fair, they don't ABUSE it to the extent that it happens frequently. But they are still promotional messages I didn't want. I'd say they send 6-8 per year. The Apple "Tips" app sends TONS of messages too. Granted that can be fixed by deleting the app. But people like my Mom still gets those messages to this day because she doesn't realize they are tied to that app and I don't believe they are opt-in, I think they are opt-out, meaning they are enabled on new phones by default (like Messages app and your Phone app). I know everyone here has deleted that app, but I bet most of our parents or children still have it installed and still get those messages. The funny thing about this comment in general is that many people probably don't realize they get notifications from Apple either. But as I mention examples they probably think, "Oh yeah, I've gotten those too". That is the biggest problem. We get so many notifications that many of us simply forget them. You get a notification that the new Macbook Pro is released and you simply read it on the backthread of your brain and dismiss it without much intentional thought. That is how Notifications have become for people. I tried to get my mom to clear up her notifications recently and she simply doesn't think about it anymore. It is just something you deal with if you own a modern phone. It isn't something you control. Like how you don't really control the billboards that you see while commuting to work. You can't disable billboards (other than actively driving to avoid them). But you brain doesn't dwell on them either. You are aware of their presence, but don't expel energy to digest every one. Notifications have become the same way. But they shouldn't be that way. We can (technologically speaking) disable them and the tools to disable them or control them should be granted to smartphone users.

jasonkester 5y ago

Personally, I just want a global setting for "Apps can send notifications" that I can turn off. Every app that I install, I have to go through the same routine of finding and killing all the various types of notifications it tries to send me. But I don't want apps to notify me of things. Ever. I'll check my email a few times a day, and the various messenger apps once every few weeks, and they will have a list of new messages. I'm fine with the phone ringing when one of my contacts calls. But that's the full extent of where I'm prepared to allow it to distract me.

joenot443 5y ago
On iOS, apps needs to ask permission before they send notifications. If you missed that, there's also a single toggle in Settings -> Notifications for each app. There's no situation where you should have to "kill all the various types of notifications". While I agree a global "Disable Notifications" toggle would be nice, I don't think it's too much work to just tap "Don't Allow" when an app initially prompts you? The iOS notification ecosystem is actually miles better than it was in the iOS 4-10 days, I think it's fairly user respectful now.
- manmal 5y ago
  There are also trial notifications, which only show up in notification center. Every app can just do that without any permission. https://developer.apple.com/documentation/usernotifications/asking_permission_to_use_notifications https://developer.apple.com/documentation/usernotifications/...
sxg 5y ago
Am I misunderstanding? Isn’t this already possible on iOS? You can either disable notifications for individual apps or just turn on Do Not Disturb mode and leave it on. Fairly sure there is a setting to allow phone calls.

alickz 5y ago

>I don't want to miss a notification that my delivery food arrived, but I don't want to be bombarded with daily advertising messages from foodpanda trying to get me to change my behavior. This is exactly what the Android notification channels allow you to do, and it actually works really well. For UberEats I have the Delivery notification channel enabled, but the Marketing channel disabled. It's really the best of both worlds. And even more surprisingly it seems most apps support this, instead of putting all notifications under one channel. I'm surprised Apple hasn't followed suit; NIH syndrome maybe?

kamilner 5y ago
In UberEats (and many other apps) you can configure which push notifications you get. Is that functionally different than channels for the purposes of turning off marketing notifications? Both seem to rely on the App developer allowing you to turn off the notifications you don't want. The problem I have are the apps which don't allow that, which presumably also wouldn't allow to separate them into channels for the same reason they don't let you turn them off.
- anchpop 5y ago
  A difference is that there's a unified UI for disabling channels, and app developers don't have to do anything except annotate each notification with the channel it belongs to and list the channels somewhere in their manifest (IIRC). If you get a notification you don't like, you long long-press it and a menu appears showing you the different notification channels and prompting you to enable or disable them.
  - eropple 5y ago
    I haven't used Android in a while. What stops a developer from not categorizing notifications and effectively saying "oh they're all General notifications, ha ha ha, you can't get the thing you want without all the slop"?
    - perryizgr8 5y ago

jaywalk 5y ago

I really like this idea, but template strings won't work for things like news of any type.

rpxio 5y ago

It looks like they’re adding interruption levels with iOS 15: https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guidelines/ios/system-capabilities/notifications/ https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guideline... See “Helping People Manage Notifications” section.

criddell 5y ago
That will be abused like crazy. Every marketing notification will be accompanied by an "order now to get 5% off your order" message so it can be classified as time sensitive.
- eloisius 5y ago
  Looks like they address that: > Never designate a marketing notification as Time Sensitive. For guidance, see Helping People Manage Notifications. Although I'm not clear on whether this are just HIG guidelines for notifications or if they are enforceable App Store rules.
  - iaml 5y ago
    App store rules are a joke, a lot of apps should be banned for violating them, but apple just doesn't give a fuck - and there aren't even proper channels to complain about it.
- irae 5y ago
  Potential abuse is not a reason for not doing this feature. Bad actors will be bad in the current system or the new one. A couple of years ago: Allow all or no notifications, hard to find settings to turn off Current: Allow all, but easy to manage from home screen, apps that want to offer a choice of types of notification must figure out how, create config UI, make sure system is stable. Users must find, and each app is different and often report options are not working iOS 15: A general framework that at the code level, each notification can declare. iOS unifies the UI for managing levels per app. Good actors will have lower costs, bad actors can be detected in device predictions. I only see benefits, and you can still block apps abusing it

cheph 5y ago

> If I could ask Apple for one thing it would be to require approval of every push notification that an app developer wants to deliver. Personally I would ask them to stop glad-handing with china and using their slave labour. But that is just me.

eloisius 5y ago
Okay, fair. I'd ask for an iPhone that was not dependent upon China's labor and supply chains first, then to give me granular control of notifications.

tristor 5y ago

Agreed with this entirely. The worst offender to me is Booking.com which will pop notifications and badges (I'm a compulsive badge clearer) on my device for marketing stuff, when I really only want notifications for messages in app around reservations. It also has added insult to injury during this pandemic season as Booking has continued to run promos and pop them when there's no reasonable way I could travel.

sonofhans 5y ago

Ooh, I agree. Amazon does this, too. I had notifications enabled in their mobile app for a while. I work in a cottage behind my house, so it’s useful to get a notification when something’s delivered. Sure enough, after about half a dozen deliveries they started spamming me with promo messages as well. I quickly turned off notifications. As usual, spammers ruin everything.

DrBenCarson 5y ago
Try https://shop.app https://shop.app it’s absolutely great for the use case you described! You can even login to Amazon directly from the iOS shop app.

drewg123 5y ago

The food apps are so bad that I typically uninstall them when they send me a spammy notification, and then re-install them when I need to use them again. The natural outcome of this is that the first app which does NOT send me spam will be the one on my phone when I want to order food, and will be the one I actually use.

Abishek_Muthian 5y ago

Notification pollution is real and I'm glad Apple is taking real steps to address it in the form of the new focus feature which lets the message sender determine whether to alert the user. I've been asking for this for a long time[1], But it shouldn't be only for 'Do Not Disturb' but rather for every message. I don't want to be alerted for meme or forwarded messages, Letting the users determine the notification level - Delayed (to be notified when I check the phone) or Immediate can go a long way to habituate message etiquette. As for non messaging apps like you mentioned, They should be shamed in the 'Notification Pollution' panel. [1]https://needgap.com/problems/59-notification-pollution-mobile-productivity https://needgap.com/problems/59-notification-pollution-mobil...

EGreg 5y ago

How about just making notifications costly? Maybe even rev-share with users.

asiachick 5y ago

agreed. my dating apps I obviously want to leave notifications on so I get notified of a new match but the company uses notification to try to get me to use the app more and I can't turn those off. Similarly the Meetup app has started spamming me with Meetup.com blog type info with no way to turn it off but I need the notifications on for meetups . this one in particular is odd given than the Meetup app has some of the most granular notification settings of any service out there. The Lyft app does this a few times a year as well.

SergeAx 5y ago

It is called FilterBox on Android. But Apple will never allow such an app on iOS, no way.

00deadbeef 5y ago

This kind of thing is already against the App Store Review Guidelines: > Push Notifications should not be used for promotions or direct marketing purposes unless customers have explicitly opted in to receive them via consent language displayed in your app’s UI, and you provide a method in your app for a user to opt out from receiving such messages. Abuse of these services may result in revocation of your privileges. Apple has now introduced a way for developers to report other apps that break the guideiness. Rest assured I will be making reports every time an app sends me advertisement notifications that I did not opt in to.

mustacheemperor 5y ago

I just want the ability to time-gate notifications. It's convenient that I can shut off notifications from Teams when I'm on vacation, but why isn't it possible to disable notifications from Teams between 6pm-6am and on the weekends? Why can't I disable push notifications from my work email on Saturday and Sunday? It's the one single quality of life feature I've most hoped to see in every iOS update since they introduced granular notification control.

Bluecobra 5y ago
The Teams iOS app already has this. Go to Settings > Notifications > Block Notifications > During Quiet Time, then specify what hours you want the app to be quiet.

coastal-fiesta 5y ago

I was so glad to see iOS offer the ability to grant apps access to a subset of your photo library, rather than your entire photo library or nothing at all. I hope they take this approach with notifications too.

matheusmoreira 5y ago

This would be an amazing feature!!

graphenus 5y ago

What you probably really want is to see a choice right after ordering some food: "Enable foodpanda notifications?" with options "enable", "keep disabled", and "enable for 2 hours".

HeavyStorm 5y ago

This. I mean, technically (or operationally) that's a challenge, but I hate that they use the same permission to bug me with ads and send me ultra important information. Oh, and my phone runs android. :)