Comment by cyberferret | Hacker News Reader

Comment by cyberferret | Hacker News Reader

Way back nearly two decades ago, I set up an early version of ActiveSync on my Palm Treo device. I noticed there was an option in the Treo email settings to disable real time syncing between certain times (after office hours), but I was SO excited about getting and responding to real time emails on my little phone device that I thought "Who the HECK would want to stop this wonderful flow of emails".

Later when I upgraded to the first gen iPhones, I noticed that they didn't have the option to turn off ActiveSync at all. I thought it was odd, but I still didn't mind.

Nowadays, I often leave my phone on DND or Airplane mode for large chunks of the day. I am totally sick of the deluge of mail from what is now 6 separate email addresses. I note that iOS 10 still hasn't got the ability to turn off syncing between certain hours that I know of. On top of that, I have alerts constantly popping up from Twitter, Slack, HelpScout, Intercom et al.

I think the whole "Work can wait" movement is a good one that needs to be front and center at a lot of workplaces (and a lot of apps).

EDIT: Thanks to the responses below, I now realise that iOS 10 DOES indeed have the capability to turn on DND during certain hours only! Winning.

There's actually a nice feature regarding that in Google Inbox. It has adopted the approach first featured in Opera 12's mail client:

Have all mail pre-filtered into categories with a bayesian (or similar) filter trained by the user themselves.

What this means in practice is that you have a bunch of categories for emails that are not urgent, like purchase receipts, ads, mailing lists, etc. and you teach inbox which of the mails you receive belong in there, just through the simple act of moving emails in and out.

Emails in those categories don't trigger notifications.

And for the kinds of emails you consider urgent, you move them out of the category they're in, let Inbox know "don't categorize this type of mail".

Only those trigger notifications.

The result of this is that your phone acts like a secretary on your emails. It sorts them into various inboxes for you so you can review them later on, or lets you know if something came in you might want to look at immediately. It's not perfect, sure, it's more akin to a 12 year old playing secretary. However it certainly stems the "tide" without forcing you to cut yourself off entirely, providing a nice medium you can use for normal work time, leaving DND mode for when you actually need exactly that.

Good tip - Yes, I do have this filtering turned on in my two main email accounts, so that sales emails, newsletters, family emails etc. (even some system related alerts) all get filtered into separate folders so I don't get the constant 'dings' and don't see the app notification counter climbing like an F1 car odometer! Google Mail/Inbox is very good at this, and I have never missed any important client emails this way.

However, it would be nice if the dings completely stopped of their own accord, say, after 6pm and didn't resume again until about 8am. (I know I can do this manually as other have suggested, but I would really like to 'baby' my phone less and have it figure out these things itself, or let me set it.)

After all, if the Google App can work out when I start my car and connect my phone to my car Bluetooth on a Wednesday evening, that I am going to my mom's place for dinner, and it tells me how long it will take to get there, surely it can extend itself to holding off all emails for the evening so I can enjoy a nice family dinner? :-)

You have an iPhone, so i can't help there. Android already has quiet hours/weekend/calendar event rules/automation. Maybe iOS will follow suit soon.

But before that, iirc, people used automation/tasking apps. I.e. primitive scripting interfaces in which you could say "when beyond this time, set to DND" or "when near this GPS location, allow only phone calls". Maybe the itunes app store has such automation apps?

It's called "do not disturb" on iOS. Use it, it makes your life better.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204321

Inbox made me so much more relaxed about emails and daily work life i can only agree.

Also the shedule for later function is a life safer for busy or lazy days.

> The result of this is that your phone acts like a secretary on your emails.

And that's exactly what workplace electronics is supposed to be about, really. We were promised a future where computers would lessen our workload and make human secretaries redundant. Well, human secretaries were made redundant but for the most part computers did not replace them.

To be honest, i've been living that future on my desktop with Opera M2 since roughly 2001. Aside from Inbox no other email client i know has ever replicated this feature.

I am very strict about work hours, and try and get the people I work with to take similar steps. I take steps to limit any possible exposure to work emails, notifications, calls from the moment I leave the office (or the work day ends), which is usually around 6pm. I don't even look at anything until 9am the next day. This has probably annoyed some people along the way, but I don't care, my time is more important to me.

I used to do that. Made a point to switch mindset when I was crossing out the door of the building and immediately started thinking about my personal projects.

It's become much more difficult now that I work remotely and use a single place and computer for both work and personal.

That is actually one of the good things about jobs with a dress code, even if it's only "business casual". You get home, you get changed, and that's a clear line drawn between work-mode and home-mode.

iOS 10 still hasn't got the ability to turn off syncing between certain hours

You can set Do Not Disturb between certain hours on iOS.

Coolness - I must have been looking in the wrong area (Mail Account Settings). Is there another spot where I can set that?

https://lmgtfy.com/?q=how+to+set+dnd+on+iphone

Settings / Do Not Disturb

It's system wide in iOS, so _nothing_ can notify you, not just email :)

Why would they want to let you turn off notifications, when that's the thing that keeps you into using those apps?

Seriously, companies have psychologists on staff analyzing the behavior of users, with their job being coming up with ways to keep you hooked. Why on earth would you receive notifications for people liking your stupid messages on Twitter or Facebook, if it weren't for our inflated ego craving for those notifications that's making us going back to these apps.

Worst on twitter is notifications because 2 people i follow retweetet the same post...

It feels that this should be handled by the notification layer. Do not push notifications for things I've already seen.

I think the parent is complaining about notifications that literally say "[X number of] people you follow retweeted this post:[...]", not duplicate notifications.

One thing I find with google Inbox which makes it indispensable on mobile is the ability to schedule times for notifications for individual addresses, groups and/or folders. Weekly, hourly, never.. whatever.

Nice. I've never dived deep into Inbox and didn't realise you could do this. Thanks for the heads up.

I have disabled notifications for my mail apps on iOS. The counter will increment but I only check them when I feel like it.

I turned off the counter too. I found that red dot way too stressful.

> I am totally sick of the deluge of mail from what is now 6 separate email addresses.

I do not use the Mail app in iOS. Rather (ironically), I use Outlook my Microsoft. It has a "Focused" and "Other" Inbox of all your mails. It only notifies you mail coming to your "Focused" inbox which it learns over time. I'm pretty happy about it.

I still use Gmail/Inbox in the browser on my Mac, or their respective apps on iOS. I am playing with PolyMail at the moment on the desktop to see how I like it.

If there is a solution like Outlook's "focused" inbox for macOS I would love to hear about it...

Funny, I submitted an Outlook for iOS feature request for just such an "outside working hours" setting (I like keeping my work account tied to this app precisely so I can compartmentalize it and not think about work things when I'm on my own time). I guess I should stop holding my breath.

I got rid of the smartphone and went back to feature phone.

I also have a 7" tablet so I can tether if I really need to.

Life is better.

My Nokia N9 has this feature too, I can set varying sync timeframes on each mail account.

I couldn't live without it.

Best thing about Windows Phone was the email notifications didn't make noise by default.

You can turn off notifications in iOS on a per app basis. I do this for emails.

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