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DoNotNotify is now Open Source

donotnotify.com

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DoNotNotify is now Open Source

#1

Post by awaaz »

A month ago, I submitted my app "DoNotNotify" to control Android notifications on Show HN [0], and it trended on the front page for a day. I was happy, but the most upvoted comments on the thread were asking for the app to be open sourced, since it dealt with system-wide notifications. My promises weren't good enough, and the community wanted more!

Why didn't I open source it in the first place? Linux has been by primary driver for more than a decade. I genuinely believe in the philosophy, and have always wanted to give back to the community. The primary reason, probably, was because I was ashamed that I had 90% vibe-coded the app. More than 2 decades of writing software, and my first contribution to FOSS would be AI-generated code? Would it withstand even the most minimal of scrutiny? Would by (unknown) name forever be tarnished? I exaggerate, but only slightly :)

So, yesterday, after a fair bit of trepidation, I changed the github repo visibility to public and put up a announcement on the app's website [1]. I have also submitted the app to F-Droid [2]. As before, I welcome the community's feedback and suggestions!

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46499646 [1] https://donotnotify.com/opensource.html [2] https://gitlab.com/fdroid/rfp/-/issues/3569

-- Anuj Jain

DoNotNotify is now Open Source
donotnotify.com

Re: DoNotNotify is now Open Source

#3

Post by cranberryturkey »

I started doing all my projects as open source from the beginning The problem isn’t “well then they won’t pay” there tons of coders and open source users who would gladly save time and energy with paid hosted version this is what I offer potential customers that’s not even the hard part the hard part is and always will be marketing and sales and distribution

Re: DoNotNotify is now Open Source

#4

Post by awaaz »

cranberryturkey wrote: post #3

I started doing all my projects as open source from the beginning The problem isn’t “well then they won’t pay” there tons of coders and open source users who would gladly save time and energy with paid hosted version this is what I offer potential customers that’s not even the hard part the hard part is and always will be marketing and sales and distribution

This isn't really a commercial project, so not much of that applies.

Re: DoNotNotify is now Open Source

#6

Post by wundersam »

Appreciate the transparency about the AI-assisted development. Your concerns about code quality are valid, but you're overthinking it. We've all shipped worse code that we wrote ourselves.The real win here is that you listened to feedback and made it verifiable. That's what the privacy-conscious Android community needed. The fact that it already works well in production is a bonus.

Re: DoNotNotify is now Open Source

#8

Post by manarth »

IshKebab wrote: post #5

I'm surprised Android has an API for one app to block notifications from other apps. I guess enjoy it while it lasts.

The NotificationListenerService.

It has genuine use-cases such as this DoNotNotify app, but could easily be misused - e.g. malware intercepting a wallet OTP notification and forwarding it to the attacker.

Access to the API is controlled by a specific permission which users have to explicitly enable in "Special app access".

https://developer.android.com/reference/android/service/noti...

Re: DoNotNotify is now Open Source

#9

Post by niobe »

nextlevelwizard wrote: post #7

Why does Android need this? Does the OS not let you control notifications?

I assume this allows more granularity. Many apps avoid you blocking their marketing by not using the notification categories system. It's all or nothing. This app would presumably allow me to differentiate between the two if it can't be done with notification categories.

Re: DoNotNotify is now Open Source

#10

Post by manarth »

nextlevelwizard wrote: post #7

Why does Android need this? Does the OS not let you control notifications?

Android does, at the level of "Allow notifications from app X" and "Block notifications from app X".

DoNotNotify gives granularity and rules (which a specific app may have chosen not to implement).

For example:

    "Allow  to display notifications of gate changes"
    "Block  from displaying advertising notifications"
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