261–270 of 428 posts
"...a notification lives only in the notification centre, which clears, drops and summarises what passes through it and retains nothing reliably."
Your notification center reliably retains information. Something like an inbox does exist, just not in userland: https://www.forbes.com/sites/larsdaniel/2026/04/10/fbi-pulle...
And the author is also wrong that all notifications on my phone go via Google. Signal and Mastodon notifications are set up via Sunup.
They seem to have given up. Don't do that please...
If my phone interrupts me, it should either mean someone genuinely needs my attention right now or it should not be disrupting me at all. That's my notification set up. Apps allowed to receive push notifications Phone, Messages, Whatsapp, Apple Health, [brand] bank. That concludes the list. There is no reason any other app needs to be able to instantly ping me. Most apps are not notifying you because something matter…
As for Whatsapp, maybe you're not in enough group chats that you still allow notifications...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, this entire article is pretty transparent that it's from the sender perspective, and worried about platforms taking over "sender control". Who is he kidding? The vast majority of apps have absolutely proven they can't be trusted to respect your attention. From my perspective, the more roadblocks the platforms put between unnecessary notifications and my phone, the better. And I don't think Apple or Google are s…
Notification categories are like mailing lists now. You may have unsubscribed from the daily deals email but you're still going to be auto subscribed to every new slightly modified category in perpetuity. Unless you fully disable notifications for an app (in Android at least, in my experience), new enabled by default notification categories are added all the time.
It would be better if they were totally opt-in of course (1), but that's not bloody likely to happen.
(1) As in off by default with no questions.
If my phone interrupts me, it should either mean someone genuinely needs my attention right now or it should not be disrupting me at all. That's my notification set up. Apps allowed to receive push notifications Phone, Messages, Whatsapp, Apple Health, [brand] bank. That concludes the list. There is no reason any other app needs to be able to instantly ping me. Most apps are not notifying you because something matter…
I have broadly the same list as you do, but stuff like WhatsApp, Messenger, and other "non primary" communications platforms have silent notifications in the sense that they're not allowed on the lock screen or Home Screen. They simply display a notification counter.
Stuff I care about that I can't do anything about "right now" are allowed on the lock screen but quietly. That includes messages from the kids schools. Most is not even that important, like field trips "next week", but once in a while there's an "important" message I need to deal with.
If my phone interrupts me, it should either mean someone genuinely needs my attention right now or it should not be disrupting me at all. That's my notification set up. Apps allowed to receive push notifications Phone, Messages, Whatsapp, Apple Health, [brand] bank. That concludes the list. There is no reason any other app needs to be able to instantly ping me. Most apps are not notifying you because something matter…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If I order an Uber, I already know it is coming. I was the person who ordered it. This is how taxis worked for decades before smartphones existed. You phoned for a taxi, then remained vaguely aware that it would arrive shortly. The question is whether a single “it has arrived” notification is worth the surrounding noise: “driver accepted”, “driver is nearby”, “rate your driver”, “here’s 10% off your next ride”, and s…
>If I order an Uber, I already know it is coming. I was the person who ordered it. Which makes me wonder why you have notifications for your bank and Whatsapp enabled. If I have an account, I know what transactions are coming out of it. I was the person who owned the account. If I have someone's number, I know if I want to see messages from them. I was the person who gave them my number. Seems really sill that you ha…
What if you receive notification about transaction that you didnt make? :)
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Notification Channels is the official way to do this on Android, but it's up to the app developer to categorize them properly. They have no incentive to allow you to turn off ads.
Actually, they do have an incentive to let you turn off ads. If they don't, many users will turn off notifications entirely. At least if they categorize them, some users will just turn off the bothersome ones.
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I recently had to setup Microsoft Authenticator. It refused to register a code unless I enabled notifications. You are a two factor app. I should never be in a situation where there is an unexpected login I need to verify.
> I should never be in a situation where there is an unexpected login I need to verify. Isn't that kind of the point? If someone else is trying to login somewhere with your credentials, your two factor will ping up?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Notification categories are like mailing lists now. You may have unsubscribed from the daily deals email but you're still going to be auto subscribed to every new slightly modified category in perpetuity. Unless you fully disable notifications for an app (in Android at least, in my experience), new enabled by default notification categories are added all the time.
iOS asks you if you want to allow notifications when each new app is started. You can just say no there and you're done. It would be better if they were totally opt-in of course (1), but that's not bloody likely to happen. (1) As in off by default with no questions.