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I run my phone on DND all day, everyday and block notifications from almost all apps. The amount of garbage we have vying for our attention on an hourly basis i

I run my phone on DND all day, everyday and block notifications from almost all apps. The amount of garbage we have vying for our attention on an hourly basis is overwhelming sometimes. The worst is the apps where you do want notifications on, like your food delivery apps so you know when your food is at the door, but those companies take that as an invite to send you daily marketing notifications and it all feels like a breach of trust.

morkalork 3y ago
It's a shame that a basic spam filter can't be inserted between the app and the OS notifications. That was the good thing about email, you could have filters sit between the app and your inbox.
FlingPoo 3y ago
I set my phone on DND when I go to bed. The only notifications I let through the DND are my security cameras (internal), and 2 phone numbers, my sister, and my business partner.
- silisili 3y ago
  Android, I think, does something this automatically. At least, I don't hear it all night, and when I go to check in the morning I get bombarded with notifications that seemed to have occured overnight.
dizhn 3y ago
All my notifications are turned off except voice calls (including on whatsapp and telegram) because I want to be woken up if there's a family emergency. Though how I am able to use the phone this way is not cool at all. I realized a long time ago that I am checking the phone all the time anyway and there's no way I would miss anything.
asynchronous 3y ago
Uber is terrible at it.
- Sarkie 3y ago
  Uber Eats. I need the notifications for a taxi not marketing for groceries during the week
  - toomuchtodo 3y ago
    Push notifications are the next regulatory target after cookies.
    - thfuran 3y ago
      I can't wait until I start getting bombarded with push notifications telling me I need to update my push notification consent settings.
      - Rebelgecko 3y ago
        We're basically already there. Every time I open snapchat it begs me to re-enable spam notifications
  - bradgessler 3y ago
    I’m pretty sure this violates Apple’s App Store policies, but they seem to not care. Apple even sometimes abuses their notifications to promote new App Store releases and other Apple services.
  - xcv123 3y ago
    There is an option somewhere in Uber Eats to disable marketing notifications. It's not easy to find.
  - xwdv 3y ago
    Postmates is an Uber Eats white label that basically pushes less of these notifications than Uber Eats proper.
  - root_axis 3y ago
    It's trivial to manage on android. https://i.imgur.com/w3A9Bge.png https://i.imgur.com/w3A9Bge.png
jt2190 3y ago
I would like a “allow notifications for the next n hours/days” setting.
- eli 3y ago
  Pretty sure iOS could do that with focus mode and a schedule or an Automator shortcut
- yieldcrv 3y ago
  there is on iPhone, its a pause notifications for a specific app for x amount of time
  - jprete 3y ago
    That’s the inverse, no?
    - yieldcrv 3y ago
      yes, accomplishes the same if you approach it that way
jacobsimon 3y ago
Maybe Apple should add a similar distinction between transactional and marketing notifications as we have with email.
- LeoPanthera 3y ago
  They do. They call them "time sensitive" notifications. You can use the "Focus" feature to delay less important types of notifications into a big batch at a specified time. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT212608 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT212608
  - wodenokoto 3y ago
    It's been asking me about these and from what it tells me on my phone I don't understand what they are getting at. But more importantly, how does it differentiate between "Your delivery has arrived" and "this weekend, 10% off all deliveries paid with mastercard from chase banks"
    - mr_mitm 3y ago
      On android, each app's notifications are categorized. For, say, Uber, I can enable the obvious useful notifications and can disable promotional notifications. Presumably Google penalizes ignoring or abusing this system.
      - gambiting 3y ago
        Hahahahaha - sorry, the mere suggestion that Google cares enough about this to "penalize" anyone who ignores this system is actually really funny to me. No, of course they don't do any such thing. The system is entirely and completely optional, and developers have long ago realized that actually using it is to their own detriment, because users will just block the marketing notifications but leave the important ones, so they just bundle everything together. I have actually messaged several developers of some of the apps I use if they can fix this exact thing and the response has always been "sorry we don't have the technical ability to do this" which is obviously complete nonsense. But no, there isn't any penalty for not doing this from google.
jeffbee 3y ago
The strongest solution to this is to use the web sites instead of the apps. I only have a few apps I really need: all the Google apps, Strava, Garmin Connect, micromobility apps for bike and scooter share, and that's it. Everything else is a website. And none of these apps are allowed to notify. The only notifications I ever get are Apple Pay and Messages. I don't even let the voicemail app (Google Fi) notify because what kind of jerk leaves a voicemail?
leesalminen 3y ago
I, too, have been running my phone on DND as of late and it’s been pretty great. My wife disagrees :). I’m pretty sure iOS focus modes would allow me to configure notifications from my wife to come through while silencing the others but I’ll wait til she tells me :).
- aidos 3y ago
  It’s fairly strightforward - if you swipe down from the top right and turn on DND there are 3 dots next to it and you can customise it. In there you can put a list of people that you want notifications from.
- nucleardog 3y ago
  Between the focus modes and general notification settings you can get things pretty quieted down. As a baseline have about half a dozen things on my phone that actually actively interrupt me. Calendar, alarms, weather alerts, banking, and, yes, messages from my wife. I have a few more that can send notifications but they don’t alert me, they all get rolled up into the “Notification Center” for me to review whenever I feel like catching up on them. (This includes direct contacts like SMS from anyone else on my “allow” list.) During work hours Slack can notify me as well. If I get any notifications outside of work hours, they’ll appear when my phone goes back to work mode. After 9pm the only things that can notify me are phone calls from a handful of people. The notifications will be there in the morning. When I’m driving I can only receive phone calls from my wife. This is a whitelist, not a blacklist. I have to consciously decide to receive notifications from something and when I want to receive them. The focuses turn themselves on and off throughout the week without me doing anything. If I’m expecting something (e.g., scheduled telehealth call), I’ll just turn focus off around the time I need to receive the notifications and deal with the firehose until it’s done. (Used to do the same for food deliveries and stuff until I moved to the middle of nowhere and stopped doing that.) I truly don’t understand how people live with their phones otherwise.
- offices 3y ago
  My wife hasn't set up focus, so my Signal messages to her don't notify her late at night. That's when I tell her I'm buying new things :)
downWidOutaFite 3y ago
Snapchat is like this, it's a communication app so you want the notifications on, but they flood it with marketing. And they refuse to use Android's notification "channels" to segment their notifications. Google should start enforcing that in their Play Store reviews.
- jeffbee 3y ago
  > it's a communication app so you want the notifications on That doesn't follow, IMO. I have tons of communication platforms that aren't allowed to notify.
  - wholinator2 3y ago
    Well for college kids and young people you need to know if an event is being created or you're being invited somewhere. I don't want to check my phone every 30 minute throughout the day and nobody around me is rigid enough to plan everything days in advance. Sometimes you wanna go on an impromptu road trip or to a party or maybe there's a test you didn't know about and the study group is organizing a session. Maybe you just wanna be a part of the conversion when you're friend group starts taking instead of always pitching in hours later. Typing this all out, these are all young people things so i don't expect someone with kids and a mortgage to have the same experience but imagine if your sms app was littered with ads and you couldn't turn off their notifications without missing messages from your children needing assistance. That's basically the type of dirty attention capture these companies are engaging in. If you don't understand why someone would use snapchat or other image based social messaging apps then you won't understand this particular issue as you don't have it.
    - Symbiote 3y ago
      It may surprise you, but people with kids or a mortgage also go to parties and organise events. I have Slack and MS Outlook on my phone for work, which are both communication apps, but notifications are muted.
- CSMastermind 3y ago
sitzkrieg 3y ago
this is the only way to use any modern software. the worst part is each app feels it's appropriate to nag you to turn on notifications best part is how all of these uis say "not now" or "maybe later" type of phrases cuz some overpaid PM thinks it will increase usage
015a 3y ago
Bumble is really similar and disgusting. By default, notifications are enabled for both messages (which are a pretty good thing to have notifications turned on for) and once or twice a day Peak Cringe marketing push notifications. They have the ability to turn off specific kinds of notifications, but one of the categories is "The Good Stuff: Turning these off means you'll miss out on our most exciting pushes of all!" and I'm not unconvinced that this is actually their daily CTAs to get you back into the app, because none of the other categories cover those.
- 93po 3y ago
  Tinder gets around this by sending fake "You have a new like" or "You have a new match" message nearly daily. You open the app and have neither. I turned off all notifications except new messages to get rid of this.
  - 3seashells 3y ago
    Time to update the app and reclassify notifications, thus loose all your settings on a weekly basis.
    - 93po 3y ago
      Thankfully only experienced this once that I can recall with Tinder
- hahamrfunnyguy 3y ago
  Well, you can turn everything off except messages so I don't see it as that big of a deal. I don't install many apps on my phone so going into the app settings and turning off notifications isn't a big deal.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- underyx 3y ago
  Another disgusting thing they do is push promo notifications with the title “1 new match?” where the question mark is the only difference from an actual app notification.
suckitsam 3y ago
[02:35 AM] DID YOU KNOW Our new feature is almost ready and will be released any day now. Visit our blog to see how you can save up to 15% on your next order! If your app wakes me up with a pointless notification, it gets uninstalled for at least a month and a one-star review on both Apple and Android app stores.
ryandrake 3y ago
I once tried disabling every notification at the app level, but it was hopeless. After going DND 24/7, my quality of life has measurably improved. I'd never go back.
alexanderchr 3y ago
It is a breach of trust. I give apps access to my immediate attention so they can notify me of things that need my attention. Not for telling me about their new features or some crappy partner deal. For this reason I have a one strike policy for apps. One marketing notification and permissions are revoked. Missing out on surprisingly little although it has made me stop using some services entirely.
- ekidd 3y ago
  > For this reason I have a one strike policy for apps. One marketing notification and permissions are revoked. Yup, this is very easy to do on Android. Long-press any notification, and you can change the notification preferences for that app. The first time I see a marketing notification, I gag that app permanently. Takes less than 3 seconds. If this also prevents that app from being useful, oh well, time to uninstall. In theory, Android apps can also categorize their notifications, so I could selectively gag them. But this takes me at least 30 seconds to figure out, and it doesn't prevent that app developer from abusing their categories. So I almost never attempt fine-grained control, unless it's an essential app. Normally I just block all notifications permanently on the first offense.
  - grotorea 3y ago
    I really wish Google would enforce proper categorization. Risking missing something on any (somewhat) important app because of the occasional marketing notification seems not worth it to me.
- dataflow 3y ago
  Starbucks is like this. They deliberately bundle together "Promotions & Order Status" to make sure you receive their junk.
  - matt-attack 3y ago
    Why order using the phone anyway? Why give them that sweet sweet data? I use Apple Pay exclusively at Starbucks. They haven’t a clue who I am.
smeej 3y ago
I just turn notifications on for an app when I'm expecting one, and turn it back off when I'm done.
- devnullbrain 3y ago
  I just uninstall the app between orders.
maxerickson 3y ago
Amazon Music lets you turn off notifications but has blocking modal advertisements for upgrades or whatever (so like when you go in to start a playlist it makes you dismiss an advertisement first). I gripe at them pretty consistently and the various customer service people don't even know the basics of how the app functions. I'm sure someone is really proud that their campaign to harass all of their paying users has led to some number of subscription upgrades though.
drewg123 3y ago
I've taken to just disabling all notifications from food delivery apps when I don't have an order pending.
mortigi 3y ago
I would argue an even worse situation are apps like Wyze camera that really need notifications enabled to alert you to camera movement, doorbell usage or other pressing events. They have an option to opt out of marketing notifications but they ignore it if you check that and still send sometimes daily notifications of sales through of their crap.
- prepend 3y ago
  I’ve used Wyze for a few years and get notifications of all my video events, but no marketing pushes. I think I had to set a setting but I am pretty happy with their pushes and are one of the few apps I leave on.
bertil 3y ago
This is entirely due to people not testing the impact of too many marketing notifications on whether people keep their notifications on—partially because Apple doesn’t share that information with developers, so they have to guess based on who comes from a notification with UTM tags. Sending too many emails or too many notifications has an evident and enormous cost when you measure it (in lost opportunities that effective notifications could bring you). If your employer does not know what the threshold should be and does not routinely cancel certain notifications or emails because they don’t meet that bar, they are losing a lot of money. It’s probably the most accessible and impactful project you could work on if you want to prove your value.
gnicholas 3y ago
Uber and Lyft do this too. They’re taking a page from the LinkedIn playbook and creating new categories of notifications, which you then have to hunt down and disable. There isn’t one unified settings area for all notifications, which makes this extra tricky.
- cptskippy 3y ago
  > There isn’t one unified settings area for all notifications, which makes this extra tricky. Perhaps not in the App but in the OS there is. On Android you can pull a notification to the side to reveal a settings icon. Open it and click the settings icon in the top right to reveal granular app notification settings and the option to completely disable notifications.
  - gnicholas 3y ago
    Yeah I think iOS has some level of granularity, like "time-sensitive" versus other notifications, but you can't disable marketing versus ride-related notifications in one predictable place (you have to hunt through the app's privacy settings, IIRC, to find at least some of them). I wish Apple would provide a per-app setting that controlled necessary versus unnecessary notifications.
    - FridgeSeal 3y ago
      The issue is that Uber marks all their stupid notifications as “time sensitive”, so it’s all-or-nothing with them.
      - squeaky-clean 3y ago
        Another abuse of the rules that would get any small developer banned from the app store with no ability to do a human appeal, while the giants are allowed to break as many rules as they want. (Except trying to dodge Apple's percentage take on in app purchases).
sirspacey 3y ago
Same and fully agree that the day there is a delivery app that separates marketing from delivery notifications, that Will be my go to delivery app. Now I’m shocked how often people’s phones “ding” at them. I’ve shared what I do, but most find it too scary that they will “miss something important.” My long-term bet is that notifications will become the new “smoking” and Apple will update policies - eventually.
nogridbag 3y ago
I was thinking of picking up the new Pixel Watch as I miss calls and notifications all the time and I thought it might reduce my phone time. But I'm also frustrated I receive too much marketing spam on apps in which I can't disable notifications. The last thing I want is those same notifications spamming my watch. Phone vendors keep releasing features that are useless to me when it seems we're all in agreement the notification spam is out of control. The vendor that gives us some way to mark notifications as spam will actually give me a reason to switch.
yujian 3y ago
i'm also on dnd all day, i just don't wanna be disturbed
xnx 3y ago
Is there a good utility that can act as an inbox for all Android alerts? Something that I could apply my own source and keyword filters to.
chinchilla2020 3y ago
Using notifications as a marketing spam tool should be an instant-blacklist on any app store - equivalent to malware. These app developers are taking advantage of an unrelated function the cell phone to spam people.
matham 3y ago
This is the primary reason I root and install greenify. To prevent these spammy apps, that I sometimes use, from running in the background and sending notifications. Unless I open the app in the forground specifically. Too bad greenify is not being maintained anymore
derefr 3y ago
> like your food delivery apps so you know when your food is at the door, but those companies take that as an invite to send you daily marketing notifications It really feels like apps should be required by App Store policy to separate out their notifications into "delivery channels": at least, one channel for urgent/timely notifications, and a separate channel for "something has changed, no need to check right now" notifications. Where users should then be able to configure the notification policies on each of an app's delivery channels separately. Then, every type of notification an app can send (i.e. every string-template for a notification message) could be required to be pre-classified with the delivery channel it will use at app version release time — with the App Store review team rejecting app updates if the update, in their opinion, misclassifies the "proper" delivery channel for a given message-template.
- drowsspa 3y ago
  A lot of them do in Android, they put marketing promotions in a separate channel you can long press to silence
- sznio 3y ago
  In the EU we had the option to opt out of marketing messaging when signing up for services for a long time. Some services (mainly telco's) punish you with an extra fee for doing that, but it's still worth it. I just realized that Uber and Tinder spam me with such marketing messages and I don't remember ever giving them consent for that.
spike021 3y ago
I have the same issue. But another somewhat related issue: apps that are allowed to ignore your audio settings. I have my sound muted pretty much all the time and inevitably apps I use that have ads auto play them usually with sound on at a high level. It's quite aggravating.
mcmoor 3y ago
> The worst is the apps where you do want notifications on, like your food delivery apps so you know when your food is at the door, but those companies take that as an invite to send you daily marketing notifications and it all feels like a breach of trust. Ah yes this is one of my pet peeve. I have resorted to block those notifications too and forced to check the app periodically for any update if I'm waiting for something. Those bastards rely on people eventually tired of that and let ad notifications through but so far I still stand fast. Although it helps that I rarely buy online.
potsandpans 3y ago
It's offensive how often postmates asks to enable notifications from the software side of things. For a while, it would ask after almost every interaction, which made the app somewhat unusable.
LanceH 3y ago
I just got a new phone and DND was on by default. I can't figure out how to get it to accept calls without turning off DND for everything.
- justsomehnguy 3y ago
  Set the ring volume to 0 Use the silent ringtone as default Use the silent ringtone as default, assing a custom ringtone for anyone you need to hear.
punkybr3wster 3y ago
Uber eats started doing that and it’s infuriating because you need the realtime notices for the app but then they send you non stop promos and make you jump through hoops to disable the marketing ones.
tomjen3 3y ago
I hate all delivery apps that don't use whatever that puts the persistent thing on your iphone screen. It was made for that, dammit. My solution to your problem is to just open the app, it defeats the purpose of notifications but I order rarely enough that it isn't a really big problem. However just sending people straight to voicemail doesn't work in a surprisingly high number of cases - I had a voicemail from a person that was just "Hello, hello, hello". Like WTF. Explain why you were calling, thats the point of voicemail.
zaptheimpaler 3y ago
On android (and maybe iOS?) apps define seperate notification channels for each category, and you can turn off specific channels quickly by sliding over on the notification in OxygenOS. Most apps I've seen have specific channels for marketing including food delivery apps. So it just took a few days of turning off junk notifications whenever I saw them to totally clean them up. I now only get the ones I want.
- figassis 3y ago
  Sadly not on iOS
jfoster 3y ago
Luckily there's a lot of food delivery apps. Make being less annoying a point of competition. Pick the least annoying ones and uninstall the others.
tsukikage 3y ago
One issue is that things don't stay DND or blocked. All the apps update individually, and also every few months the vendor publishes a new OS update with yet more enshittification to turn off (where you even can! Search for how to turn off "at a glance" to see a tide of consumer misery and frustration. The vendor has important awesome things they want to do with your device, and only occasionally do those happen to align with the boring unimportant everyday activities /you/ want to use your device for.) I would pay serious money for an ecosystem that promised no enshittification creep, but sadly that is not on the cards.
- vekker 3y ago
  Huh, strange, is this specific to Android? Because my DND mode stays DND throughout updates, except for the contacts and apps I've already marked as the exceptions. I don't think I've ever had the problem of unwanted notifications.
  - Gunnerhead 3y ago
    Me too, my DND has been enabled for years now with the occasional explicit disabling of it.
jonathanlydall 3y ago
Yeah, delivery apps suck in this regard and iOS should really do more to help. I would love a push notification option to the effect of “only if I’ve used the app in the last 2 hours”.
Self-Perfection 3y ago
One don't need trust if money are at stake. My attention is a valuable resource for me, and it is limited. So it should be bought. We should make sending notifications billable and let users set price for sending notifications to them. And voila - problem solved!
eviks 3y ago
Indeed, those are the worst because there is no customization available re. what you can block
mensetmanusman 3y ago
I tried that, but now windows 11 keeps getting micro updates at work and the advertisements in the start menu are always enabled and telling me about wonderful sales.

morkalork 3y ago

It's a shame that a basic spam filter can't be inserted between the app and the OS notifications. That was the good thing about email, you could have filters sit between the app and your inbox.

FlingPoo 3y ago

I set my phone on DND when I go to bed. The only notifications I let through the DND are my security cameras (internal), and 2 phone numbers, my sister, and my business partner.

silisili 3y ago
Android, I think, does something this automatically. At least, I don't hear it all night, and when I go to check in the morning I get bombarded with notifications that seemed to have occured overnight.

dizhn 3y ago

All my notifications are turned off except voice calls (including on whatsapp and telegram) because I want to be woken up if there's a family emergency. Though how I am able to use the phone this way is not cool at all. I realized a long time ago that I am checking the phone all the time anyway and there's no way I would miss anything.

asynchronous 3y ago

Uber is terrible at it.

Sarkie 3y ago
Uber Eats. I need the notifications for a taxi not marketing for groceries during the week
- toomuchtodo 3y ago
  Push notifications are the next regulatory target after cookies.
  - thfuran 3y ago
    I can't wait until I start getting bombarded with push notifications telling me I need to update my push notification consent settings.
    - Rebelgecko 3y ago
      We're basically already there. Every time I open snapchat it begs me to re-enable spam notifications
- bradgessler 3y ago
  I’m pretty sure this violates Apple’s App Store policies, but they seem to not care. Apple even sometimes abuses their notifications to promote new App Store releases and other Apple services.
- xcv123 3y ago
  There is an option somewhere in Uber Eats to disable marketing notifications. It's not easy to find.
- xwdv 3y ago
  Postmates is an Uber Eats white label that basically pushes less of these notifications than Uber Eats proper.
- root_axis 3y ago
  It's trivial to manage on android. https://i.imgur.com/w3A9Bge.png https://i.imgur.com/w3A9Bge.png

jt2190 3y ago

I would like a “allow notifications for the next n hours/days” setting.

eli 3y ago
Pretty sure iOS could do that with focus mode and a schedule or an Automator shortcut
yieldcrv 3y ago
there is on iPhone, its a pause notifications for a specific app for x amount of time
- jprete 3y ago
  That’s the inverse, no?
  - yieldcrv 3y ago
    yes, accomplishes the same if you approach it that way

jacobsimon 3y ago

Maybe Apple should add a similar distinction between transactional and marketing notifications as we have with email.

LeoPanthera 3y ago
They do. They call them "time sensitive" notifications. You can use the "Focus" feature to delay less important types of notifications into a big batch at a specified time. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT212608 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT212608
- wodenokoto 3y ago
  It's been asking me about these and from what it tells me on my phone I don't understand what they are getting at. But more importantly, how does it differentiate between "Your delivery has arrived" and "this weekend, 10% off all deliveries paid with mastercard from chase banks"
  - mr_mitm 3y ago
    On android, each app's notifications are categorized. For, say, Uber, I can enable the obvious useful notifications and can disable promotional notifications. Presumably Google penalizes ignoring or abusing this system.
    - gambiting 3y ago
      Hahahahaha - sorry, the mere suggestion that Google cares enough about this to "penalize" anyone who ignores this system is actually really funny to me. No, of course they don't do any such thing. The system is entirely and completely optional, and developers have long ago realized that actually using it is to their own detriment, because users will just block the marketing notifications but leave the important ones, so they just bundle everything together. I have actually messaged several developers of some of the apps I use if they can fix this exact thing and the response has always been "sorry we don't have the technical ability to do this" which is obviously complete nonsense. But no, there isn't any penalty for not doing this from google.

jeffbee 3y ago

The strongest solution to this is to use the web sites instead of the apps. I only have a few apps I really need: all the Google apps, Strava, Garmin Connect, micromobility apps for bike and scooter share, and that's it. Everything else is a website. And none of these apps are allowed to notify. The only notifications I ever get are Apple Pay and Messages. I don't even let the voicemail app (Google Fi) notify because what kind of jerk leaves a voicemail?

leesalminen 3y ago

I, too, have been running my phone on DND as of late and it’s been pretty great. My wife disagrees :). I’m pretty sure iOS focus modes would allow me to configure notifications from my wife to come through while silencing the others but I’ll wait til she tells me :).

aidos 3y ago
It’s fairly strightforward - if you swipe down from the top right and turn on DND there are 3 dots next to it and you can customise it. In there you can put a list of people that you want notifications from.
nucleardog 3y ago
Between the focus modes and general notification settings you can get things pretty quieted down. As a baseline have about half a dozen things on my phone that actually actively interrupt me. Calendar, alarms, weather alerts, banking, and, yes, messages from my wife. I have a few more that can send notifications but they don’t alert me, they all get rolled up into the “Notification Center” for me to review whenever I feel like catching up on them. (This includes direct contacts like SMS from anyone else on my “allow” list.) During work hours Slack can notify me as well. If I get any notifications outside of work hours, they’ll appear when my phone goes back to work mode. After 9pm the only things that can notify me are phone calls from a handful of people. The notifications will be there in the morning. When I’m driving I can only receive phone calls from my wife. This is a whitelist, not a blacklist. I have to consciously decide to receive notifications from something and when I want to receive them. The focuses turn themselves on and off throughout the week without me doing anything. If I’m expecting something (e.g., scheduled telehealth call), I’ll just turn focus off around the time I need to receive the notifications and deal with the firehose until it’s done. (Used to do the same for food deliveries and stuff until I moved to the middle of nowhere and stopped doing that.) I truly don’t understand how people live with their phones otherwise.
offices 3y ago
My wife hasn't set up focus, so my Signal messages to her don't notify her late at night. That's when I tell her I'm buying new things :)

downWidOutaFite 3y ago

Snapchat is like this, it's a communication app so you want the notifications on, but they flood it with marketing. And they refuse to use Android's notification "channels" to segment their notifications. Google should start enforcing that in their Play Store reviews.

jeffbee 3y ago
> it's a communication app so you want the notifications on That doesn't follow, IMO. I have tons of communication platforms that aren't allowed to notify.
- wholinator2 3y ago
  Well for college kids and young people you need to know if an event is being created or you're being invited somewhere. I don't want to check my phone every 30 minute throughout the day and nobody around me is rigid enough to plan everything days in advance. Sometimes you wanna go on an impromptu road trip or to a party or maybe there's a test you didn't know about and the study group is organizing a session. Maybe you just wanna be a part of the conversion when you're friend group starts taking instead of always pitching in hours later. Typing this all out, these are all young people things so i don't expect someone with kids and a mortgage to have the same experience but imagine if your sms app was littered with ads and you couldn't turn off their notifications without missing messages from your children needing assistance. That's basically the type of dirty attention capture these companies are engaging in. If you don't understand why someone would use snapchat or other image based social messaging apps then you won't understand this particular issue as you don't have it.
  - Symbiote 3y ago
    It may surprise you, but people with kids or a mortgage also go to parties and organise events. I have Slack and MS Outlook on my phone for work, which are both communication apps, but notifications are muted.
CSMastermind 3y ago

sitzkrieg 3y ago

this is the only way to use any modern software. the worst part is each app feels it's appropriate to nag you to turn on notifications best part is how all of these uis say "not now" or "maybe later" type of phrases cuz some overpaid PM thinks it will increase usage

015a 3y ago

Bumble is really similar and disgusting. By default, notifications are enabled for both messages (which are a pretty good thing to have notifications turned on for) and once or twice a day Peak Cringe marketing push notifications. They have the ability to turn off specific kinds of notifications, but one of the categories is "The Good Stuff: Turning these off means you'll miss out on our most exciting pushes of all!" and I'm not unconvinced that this is actually their daily CTAs to get you back into the app, because none of the other categories cover those.

93po 3y ago
Tinder gets around this by sending fake "You have a new like" or "You have a new match" message nearly daily. You open the app and have neither. I turned off all notifications except new messages to get rid of this.
- 3seashells 3y ago
  Time to update the app and reclassify notifications, thus loose all your settings on a weekly basis.
  - 93po 3y ago
    Thankfully only experienced this once that I can recall with Tinder
hahamrfunnyguy 3y ago
Well, you can turn everything off except messages so I don't see it as that big of a deal. I don't install many apps on my phone so going into the app settings and turning off notifications isn't a big deal.
deleted 3y ago
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underyx 3y ago
Another disgusting thing they do is push promo notifications with the title “1 new match?” where the question mark is the only difference from an actual app notification.

suckitsam 3y ago

[02:35 AM] DID YOU KNOW Our new feature is almost ready and will be released any day now. Visit our blog to see how you can save up to 15% on your next order! If your app wakes me up with a pointless notification, it gets uninstalled for at least a month and a one-star review on both Apple and Android app stores.

ryandrake 3y ago

I once tried disabling every notification at the app level, but it was hopeless. After going DND 24/7, my quality of life has measurably improved. I'd never go back.

alexanderchr 3y ago

It is a breach of trust. I give apps access to my immediate attention so they can notify me of things that need my attention. Not for telling me about their new features or some crappy partner deal. For this reason I have a one strike policy for apps. One marketing notification and permissions are revoked. Missing out on surprisingly little although it has made me stop using some services entirely.

ekidd 3y ago
> For this reason I have a one strike policy for apps. One marketing notification and permissions are revoked. Yup, this is very easy to do on Android. Long-press any notification, and you can change the notification preferences for that app. The first time I see a marketing notification, I gag that app permanently. Takes less than 3 seconds. If this also prevents that app from being useful, oh well, time to uninstall. In theory, Android apps can also categorize their notifications, so I could selectively gag them. But this takes me at least 30 seconds to figure out, and it doesn't prevent that app developer from abusing their categories. So I almost never attempt fine-grained control, unless it's an essential app. Normally I just block all notifications permanently on the first offense.
- grotorea 3y ago
  I really wish Google would enforce proper categorization. Risking missing something on any (somewhat) important app because of the occasional marketing notification seems not worth it to me.
dataflow 3y ago
Starbucks is like this. They deliberately bundle together "Promotions & Order Status" to make sure you receive their junk.
- matt-attack 3y ago
  Why order using the phone anyway? Why give them that sweet sweet data? I use Apple Pay exclusively at Starbucks. They haven’t a clue who I am.

smeej 3y ago

I just turn notifications on for an app when I'm expecting one, and turn it back off when I'm done.

devnullbrain 3y ago
I just uninstall the app between orders.

maxerickson 3y ago

Amazon Music lets you turn off notifications but has blocking modal advertisements for upgrades or whatever (so like when you go in to start a playlist it makes you dismiss an advertisement first). I gripe at them pretty consistently and the various customer service people don't even know the basics of how the app functions. I'm sure someone is really proud that their campaign to harass all of their paying users has led to some number of subscription upgrades though.

drewg123 3y ago

I've taken to just disabling all notifications from food delivery apps when I don't have an order pending.

mortigi 3y ago

I would argue an even worse situation are apps like Wyze camera that really need notifications enabled to alert you to camera movement, doorbell usage or other pressing events. They have an option to opt out of marketing notifications but they ignore it if you check that and still send sometimes daily notifications of sales through of their crap.

prepend 3y ago
I’ve used Wyze for a few years and get notifications of all my video events, but no marketing pushes. I think I had to set a setting but I am pretty happy with their pushes and are one of the few apps I leave on.

bertil 3y ago

This is entirely due to people not testing the impact of too many marketing notifications on whether people keep their notifications on—partially because Apple doesn’t share that information with developers, so they have to guess based on who comes from a notification with UTM tags. Sending too many emails or too many notifications has an evident and enormous cost when you measure it (in lost opportunities that effective notifications could bring you). If your employer does not know what the threshold should be and does not routinely cancel certain notifications or emails because they don’t meet that bar, they are losing a lot of money. It’s probably the most accessible and impactful project you could work on if you want to prove your value.

gnicholas 3y ago

Uber and Lyft do this too. They’re taking a page from the LinkedIn playbook and creating new categories of notifications, which you then have to hunt down and disable. There isn’t one unified settings area for all notifications, which makes this extra tricky.

cptskippy 3y ago
> There isn’t one unified settings area for all notifications, which makes this extra tricky. Perhaps not in the App but in the OS there is. On Android you can pull a notification to the side to reveal a settings icon. Open it and click the settings icon in the top right to reveal granular app notification settings and the option to completely disable notifications.
- gnicholas 3y ago
  Yeah I think iOS has some level of granularity, like "time-sensitive" versus other notifications, but you can't disable marketing versus ride-related notifications in one predictable place (you have to hunt through the app's privacy settings, IIRC, to find at least some of them). I wish Apple would provide a per-app setting that controlled necessary versus unnecessary notifications.
  - FridgeSeal 3y ago
    The issue is that Uber marks all their stupid notifications as “time sensitive”, so it’s all-or-nothing with them.
    - squeaky-clean 3y ago
      Another abuse of the rules that would get any small developer banned from the app store with no ability to do a human appeal, while the giants are allowed to break as many rules as they want. (Except trying to dodge Apple's percentage take on in app purchases).

sirspacey 3y ago

Same and fully agree that the day there is a delivery app that separates marketing from delivery notifications, that Will be my go to delivery app. Now I’m shocked how often people’s phones “ding” at them. I’ve shared what I do, but most find it too scary that they will “miss something important.” My long-term bet is that notifications will become the new “smoking” and Apple will update policies - eventually.

nogridbag 3y ago

I was thinking of picking up the new Pixel Watch as I miss calls and notifications all the time and I thought it might reduce my phone time. But I'm also frustrated I receive too much marketing spam on apps in which I can't disable notifications. The last thing I want is those same notifications spamming my watch. Phone vendors keep releasing features that are useless to me when it seems we're all in agreement the notification spam is out of control. The vendor that gives us some way to mark notifications as spam will actually give me a reason to switch.

yujian 3y ago

i'm also on dnd all day, i just don't wanna be disturbed

xnx 3y ago

Is there a good utility that can act as an inbox for all Android alerts? Something that I could apply my own source and keyword filters to.

chinchilla2020 3y ago

Using notifications as a marketing spam tool should be an instant-blacklist on any app store - equivalent to malware. These app developers are taking advantage of an unrelated function the cell phone to spam people.

matham 3y ago

This is the primary reason I root and install greenify. To prevent these spammy apps, that I sometimes use, from running in the background and sending notifications. Unless I open the app in the forground specifically. Too bad greenify is not being maintained anymore

derefr 3y ago

> like your food delivery apps so you know when your food is at the door, but those companies take that as an invite to send you daily marketing notifications It really feels like apps should be required by App Store policy to separate out their notifications into "delivery channels": at least, one channel for urgent/timely notifications, and a separate channel for "something has changed, no need to check right now" notifications. Where users should then be able to configure the notification policies on each of an app's delivery channels separately. Then, every type of notification an app can send (i.e. every string-template for a notification message) could be required to be pre-classified with the delivery channel it will use at app version release time — with the App Store review team rejecting app updates if the update, in their opinion, misclassifies the "proper" delivery channel for a given message-template.

drowsspa 3y ago
A lot of them do in Android, they put marketing promotions in a separate channel you can long press to silence
sznio 3y ago
In the EU we had the option to opt out of marketing messaging when signing up for services for a long time. Some services (mainly telco's) punish you with an extra fee for doing that, but it's still worth it. I just realized that Uber and Tinder spam me with such marketing messages and I don't remember ever giving them consent for that.

spike021 3y ago

I have the same issue. But another somewhat related issue: apps that are allowed to ignore your audio settings. I have my sound muted pretty much all the time and inevitably apps I use that have ads auto play them usually with sound on at a high level. It's quite aggravating.

mcmoor 3y ago

> The worst is the apps where you do want notifications on, like your food delivery apps so you know when your food is at the door, but those companies take that as an invite to send you daily marketing notifications and it all feels like a breach of trust. Ah yes this is one of my pet peeve. I have resorted to block those notifications too and forced to check the app periodically for any update if I'm waiting for something. Those bastards rely on people eventually tired of that and let ad notifications through but so far I still stand fast. Although it helps that I rarely buy online.

potsandpans 3y ago

It's offensive how often postmates asks to enable notifications from the software side of things. For a while, it would ask after almost every interaction, which made the app somewhat unusable.

LanceH 3y ago

I just got a new phone and DND was on by default. I can't figure out how to get it to accept calls without turning off DND for everything.

justsomehnguy 3y ago
Set the ring volume to 0 Use the silent ringtone as default Use the silent ringtone as default, assing a custom ringtone for anyone you need to hear.

punkybr3wster 3y ago

Uber eats started doing that and it’s infuriating because you need the realtime notices for the app but then they send you non stop promos and make you jump through hoops to disable the marketing ones.

tomjen3 3y ago

I hate all delivery apps that don't use whatever that puts the persistent thing on your iphone screen. It was made for that, dammit. My solution to your problem is to just open the app, it defeats the purpose of notifications but I order rarely enough that it isn't a really big problem. However just sending people straight to voicemail doesn't work in a surprisingly high number of cases - I had a voicemail from a person that was just "Hello, hello, hello". Like WTF. Explain why you were calling, thats the point of voicemail.

zaptheimpaler 3y ago

On android (and maybe iOS?) apps define seperate notification channels for each category, and you can turn off specific channels quickly by sliding over on the notification in OxygenOS. Most apps I've seen have specific channels for marketing including food delivery apps. So it just took a few days of turning off junk notifications whenever I saw them to totally clean them up. I now only get the ones I want.

figassis 3y ago
Sadly not on iOS

jfoster 3y ago

Luckily there's a lot of food delivery apps. Make being less annoying a point of competition. Pick the least annoying ones and uninstall the others.

tsukikage 3y ago

One issue is that things don't stay DND or blocked. All the apps update individually, and also every few months the vendor publishes a new OS update with yet more enshittification to turn off (where you even can! Search for how to turn off "at a glance" to see a tide of consumer misery and frustration. The vendor has important awesome things they want to do with your device, and only occasionally do those happen to align with the boring unimportant everyday activities /you/ want to use your device for.) I would pay serious money for an ecosystem that promised no enshittification creep, but sadly that is not on the cards.

vekker 3y ago
Huh, strange, is this specific to Android? Because my DND mode stays DND throughout updates, except for the contacts and apps I've already marked as the exceptions. I don't think I've ever had the problem of unwanted notifications.
- Gunnerhead 3y ago
  Me too, my DND has been enabled for years now with the occasional explicit disabling of it.

jonathanlydall 3y ago

Yeah, delivery apps suck in this regard and iOS should really do more to help. I would love a push notification option to the effect of “only if I’ve used the app in the last 2 hours”.

Self-Perfection 3y ago

One don't need trust if money are at stake. My attention is a valuable resource for me, and it is limited. So it should be bought. We should make sending notifications billable and let users set price for sending notifications to them. And voila - problem solved!

eviks 3y ago

Indeed, those are the worst because there is no customization available re. what you can block

mensetmanusman 3y ago

I tried that, but now windows 11 keeps getting micro updates at work and the advertisements in the start menu are always enabled and telling me about wonderful sales.