Disable everything except email and WhatsApp, also SMS for deliveries

Why the fuck would you have BBC News notify you that Pol Pot won Strictly Come Dancing?!?

Never understood why people would leave notifications on for everything, except to have their phone beep in public to make them seem popular, maybe?

I let the apps have a chance, but if they drop a notification when it wasn’t needed I remove the privilege. Unless it’s a game, then it’s insta muted.

As few as possible, meaning immediate communication apps and a couple that monitor devices. A few more can notify if they’re running.

Yes, and UberEats in particular is big mad about it. It brings me joy to tap “Deny” everytime it asks me to turn them back on.

The only notifications I get are texts/calls, and a couple smart-home things that are set to warn me about temps or when a light-timer turns on or off. Not even social media, especially not social media, get to interrupt my day.

All of them? No.

My messaging apps get to notify me. Everything else gets to fuck off.

I know I want some of them and I don’t have infinite apps, so whichever one’s irritate me after a few notifications I long press and disable that notification.

After a few weeks or so you just get the notification you care about

It’s on for Messaging apps, email, and specific apps I with want or need notifications for. I don’t have it on for any social media apps, I check those on my own time when I please. All sounds are off thanks to my Apple Watch that vibrates.

Android user here. I have five different classes of notifications:

1. Completely off, notifications blocked. Any category that doesn’t give me actionable notifications or notifications based on something I’ve explicitly asked for is here. All streaming apps and games are here. Any app that tries to send me an ad in a notification gets this treatment. Almost every social media category also gets this setting, though there are a couple notable exceptions I’ll get to later. All notifications that are not important and not urgent go here.

2. On, but delivered silently and minimized. “Silently” might be a bit of a misnomer here since I rarely have sound on, but this also means no vibration. The notifications are also minimized in the notification shade and go to the bottom of the list. This is where my new email notifications go, because I’ve got my inbox pretty well filtered down and only things that are actionable are allowed to stay unread in the inbox. Basically this is for anything that’s important but not urgent.

3. Silent. See above for “silent” disclaimer. This section is for notifications that are urgent but may or may not be important; notifications from my cameras, for instance, or headlines from a news org. I also allow selected categories of Mastodon and Lemmy notifications through: only messages typed out by another human, though. Not likes or reposts.

4. Vibrate/sounds. For notifications that are both important and usually urgent. Text messages, Discord messages (from friends only), Slack messages while working. 2FA checkins. Most notifications from my library. Delivery notifications. The notification that my garage door has been left open (it happens a lot). Also, unfortunately, I have to have Instagram DMs in this category, because my wife sends me memes and they’re always really good.

5. Vibrate/sounds and override Do Not Disturb. This category is for VERY urgent and VERY important notifications. Messages from family members (though not group messages). Notifications from my alarm system. The doorbell.

I do also use BuzzKill to finesse messages that I think are delivered in the wrong Android categories; like the stupid notifications my cameras always send about cold weather. I know it’s cold, and I know that’ll affect your battery life. I don’t need to be told every time the temperature dips below 40°F, but I do still want to know when somebody is trying to get into my garage.

Ya, I only allow them for apps that I want to be notified for like email, Lemmy, etc basically messaging stuff.

If you don’t then some app somewhere is going to send you an ad as a “notification” which pisses me off to no end.

I disable notifications for everything I can, but some need to stay enabled. My line of work means I need to leave email notifications on, for example. Texts and other messaging apps are on too, because otherwise I’ll go days without talking to people. My blue light filter app also has a spot of the notification bar, so that I can always turn it off and on when I want to.

I’m not very aggressive about disabling[0] notifications. I don’t install apps that try to sell me stuff or otherwise manipulate me though so it’s rare I get unwanted notifications.

Quite a few commercial apps have perfectly good websites, and I use those in preference to apps most of the time.

[0] Technically just not enabling; Android now requires them to ask for permission before sending any

I only allow messaging services that my friends and family use, calendar, and alarms.

I check everything else often enough on my own without any notifications.

Email, Signal and SMS get notifications. Literally everything else is off, and I use Buzzkill to shorten the vibrate. I have ASD, and run my own business, so I get literally 30-40 SMS/200+ Signal notifications a day, and the constant BZZZZ BZZZZ actually causes me an immense amount of sensory overload. Buzzkill ensures that vibration pattern is nothing more than a very quick sub-half second, one-off buzz. The number of apps I actually have installed is so few, I can literally fit them on one screen, no scrolling required, and I check for the few app updates I’ll need manually each day.

I get notifications for text messages, nothing else. The phone is not the boss of me. I am the boss of the phone.

Yes, initially, then I will enable them as I need them, not as the app wants them.

I bought an app to get heads up of northern lights, at first I disabled notifications, but that made the app pointless, so I have allowed some notifications.

Other than that, I only have notifications on my message app.