I don’t have notifications enabled, nowhere and never | Hacker News Reader

I don’t have notifications enabled, nowhere and never

137 pointsCurzel162 comments

I never was much into notifications, and since it became possible, I have only ever allowed a selection of apps (IM, email, calendar) to send me notifications.

Since 2020 I disabled notifications completely on every device I own.

I'm not more focused, nor more productive, but, at least, they stopped popping up in the corner of the screen.

This included browser-based notifications, which not only are the most annoying kind, as they pop up virtually on every website, but I also have to regularly disable them on phones of friends and family, as they come and ask me to "remove the notifications virus"...

I can understand IM, email, calendar, even order tracking push notifications. But do you really use ANY other notifications?

Do you use ANY notifications in places other than your phone?

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Do Not Disturb mode. 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. No notifications, no texts, no calls, nothing at all begging for my attention. Once you've tried it, you'll never go back. I now use my devices when I want, on my own terms, and on my own schedule, not when some app company product manager or other rando people want me to use them. To me, using a computing device should be a deliberate act, with a purpose and limited duration, not some mindless response to stimulus. I'd say my quality of life has increased since making this change--I'm no longer being trained to allow (and get anxious about) arbitrary interruptions throughout the day. I feel I have more time in the day to do what I want without my device constantly begging me to "check in".

I go home and visit my parents and their devices are beeping and buzzing and vibrating every 5 seconds or so. It's like living on the Las Vegas strip. I see people out in restaurants together constantly picking up their phone over and over because it's dinging at them. I can't even imagine myself living like that anymore.

>> ...no calls...

You must not have kids / spouse then. You can get a call from school / daycare any time that your kid is sick or hurt and needs to be picked up immediately. Or your spouse can call you that their car broke down and (s)he needs help. I want to be notified immediately of such situations.

That's a good point, I make an exception only for calls, and only if they are in my contacts (school etc. are in my contacts), but I leave all other notifications always off on all my devices.

PS at least where I leave (Australia) allowing all calls including numbers not in my contacts, would mean receiving several spam calls every week, so I gave up on that.

I get one generic spam phone call every month or two. My phone number has historically been on whois records for a couple of domain names, so I sometimes get related spam (your website is broken, you want to pay us to make another, right?), largely from only one or two entities despite being asked to stop it and being reminded that they’re breaking the law (I’m on the Do Not Call Register, have been as long as I’ve had the number, over 7 years), almost always from 07 or 08 phone numbers, but just occasionally from 02 or 03 (just a couple of days ago I got two in one day from the same company, even the same person I think, once 07 and once 03). I don’t know if I’ve ever received a legitimate call from outside 03 (Victoria, where I live) or 04 (mobile). Since I started using it for business as well, I’ve got a very small number of other calls as well (maybe three or four in a year).

My phone number can be trivially found, if someone wants to target me, in all its 2¹⁵‐suffix glory. My only defence is presence on the Do Not Call Register. If you’re not on it, try it. (I don’t really understand, from a serving-the-people perspective, why they don’t just abolish it and apply it to everyone—I can’t think of any reason why anyone would consciously choose not to be on it.)

Thank you, I wasn't aware that there was a Do Not Call Register, I'm registering my number right now. I too have noticed that spammers prefer 07 or 08 (I'm in NSW so legitimate calls are usually from 02). I hope this will work as well for me as it did in your case!

Several spam calls per day here, also Australia.

Do you not have something similar to Truecaller to block all the spam?

Several a day here too, USA

Here in Europe, I have 2-3 spam calls in year. I always asks where did they find my number and then ask politely if they know something about GDPR. Usually they don't waste my time anymore and hang up.

Several calls per day on Brazil but I kind don't notice it because Google app is super effective at blocking spam. Here we can't even talk to someone most of the times because those dirty spammers calls many numbers at the same time, transfer to whoever answer first and terminate the other calls with zero explanation.

I always have do not disturb on but I add my family, friends and certain coworkers to my favorites list. There’s a setting that allows contacts in your favorites to bypass do not disturb. Calls always come through.

You can set contacts and emergency numbers to bypass DND.

> Once you've tried it, you'll never go back.

Whenever I try this, I keep checking if something is waiting for me. For me, it is not as simple as turning off notifications. I also need to train my brain to stop thinking about new messages and that is turning out to be harder than I thought.

Old habits die hard but they do die. Try keeping your phone out of sight and out of reach for a while.

i keep it in a different room.

i've become accustomed to not checking it.

All of my daily 2fa auth happens through my phone. :'(

Yes, this is infuriating. For the most part I've got 2fa set up to go to a Google Voice number or an email address because of this, but there are random exceptions.

Get a dumb phone and see how magical pre-smartphone era was.

Which one? KaiOS is another google data mining OS. Other OS's on dumbphones are useless. You can't even save notes and sync with cloud (DAVx) or use synced calendar. Which is crucial for my work.

Same for me. But I end up never getting a call and needing to check cellphone every 5 mins. What is working great for me now is to turn off everything and just leave calls on loud (like phone was originally designed)

Yup that's a good solution. I want to make sure the wife can reach me or my kid's school or other parents when my kid is at a friend' place.

But I hate notifications with a passion.

Now I have a landline phone again (it came for free with the fiber optic plan / router so why not), so most of the time people can reach me there too.

If only I could...

Unfortunately, it's a device for work, and I need to be able to respond to calls and texts from people that are not in my contact list, even outside working hours.

I don't have any apps producing alerts other than messaging, calls, email, and calendar, but Monday I got twelve texts from seven different people in less than five minutes. All needed responses within five to ten minutes.

I could ditch it, but then I'd have to carry a pager.

I only have WhatsApp notifications enabled and only for specific people. Phone doesn't make noise or vibrate ever, I only see messages when I pick it up.

> I go home and visit my parents and their devices are beeping and buzzing and vibrating every 5 seconds or so.

I know exactly what you mean. I even tried to get them to disable that noise but it turned out they wanted to be notified. I will never understand it.

> Do Not Disturb mode. 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. No notifications, no texts, no calls, nothing at all begging for my attention.

What do you actually do during the day, that warrants such a brain-in-a-jar lifestyle with no need to interact with other people?

You can interact with people in ways other than the immediate interruption that come from phone notifications. Asynchronous communication (answering E-mails, texts, voice messages) can happen on your own schedule when it's least disruptive. You can do it as frequently as you want, too, if responsiveness is important. The point is that you are in control of when that interaction happens, not the device.

I'm reminded of the band Kraftwerk's strategy for dealing with interruptions, from their Wiki page[1]:

"... anyone trying to contact the band for collaboration would be told the studio telephone did not have a ringer since, while recording, the band did not like to hear any kind of noise pollution. Instead, callers were instructed to phone the studio precisely at a certain time, whereupon the phone would be answered by Ralf Hütter, despite never hearing the phone ring."

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kraftwerk

This is telling. A generation has had interruptions so normalised, that for them it's a given that you're interrupted as part of interactions with other people.

Were you to _call_ them on their phones though, they'd stare in horror at the device, wondering who could be so mentally deranged. The irony makes me smile :)

A call requires immediate attention, which is not always possible and often unnecessary. A notification lets you know that there is something to check out, but you can choose when to check it out.

That's fair, though I think what most of us are talking about is the interruption itself.

>> A generation has had interruptions so normalised

When I was growing up, the phone would ring and you would answer it without knowing who it was because people didn't have answering machines or caller ID. Interruptions were much more intrusive then.

I'm probably one of the oldest people on here. Certainly I'm far older than the "kids these days with their beeping pinging phones, how can they stand it" demographic.

How does not liking notifications and engaging with messengers, social networks and other sources of high-volume input translate to not interacting with other people? There's still, you know, real life?!

So you never talk with your friends when they're not physically close to you?

Why wouldn't I? We talk on the phone, sometimes have video calls (usually in groups) and occasionally use SMS as a fallback if a call is not an option. E-Mail is also sometimes involved if it's a more in-depth exchange or something involving E-Mail anyway (booking confirmations and the like).

edit after re-reading: I didn't mean to make my original comment sound like there is only real life. Just that not liking and not engaging with more or less continuous modes of communication and notifications does not equal not interacting with people.

What do you think people did before smartphones, or even before the internet? It wasn't that long ago, you could ask someone. You know, in person.

We had these things called "phones", which were attached to the wall with a bit of wire, and made a loud chiming sound when someone wanted to talk to you. They didn't have a "Do Not Disturb" mode as such, but typically if you wanted to use it to talk to someone you would do so if it was important.

People spent significant periods of time away from phones, and those calling did not have strong expectations of being answered right away.

I know a friend who had "speaking hours" where he'd respond quickly to messages, outside of that, writing to him over email/IM was asynchronous.

OP can also schedule time (and place?) to chat to others.

There are other ways to interact with people than through texts or calls. Besides, GP did not say that he doesn't text or do calls he just said that they aren't begging for his attention.

I follow a slightly relaxed version of yours.

- One social media app: Reddit

- One chat/call app: Signal.

- Notifications for every app, except Signal, are disabled

- Do Not Disturb from 7PM-8AM with one exception: my wife's phone number

This looks too much for me. Your parents can't reach you on phone.

On my wife's iPhone, they have groups that allow _certain people_ to contact them with _everything else_ being disabled. I would assume there's similar settings across devices.

I have been using similar settings on a Pixel 3 (Android 12). I'm not sure if it's provided by the OS or Google's dialer app though.

Yes, it’s on iPhone, you can filter by contact type or what you’re doing:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT212608

https://www.theverge.com/2019/9/26/20883331/iphone-do-not-di...

iPhones have a "Silence Unknown Callers" feature now which sends anyone not in contacts straight to voicemail. It's also a bit smarter so if you call someone it will allow them to call back even if they aren't in your contacts list.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT207099

called "starred contacts" on Android.

Concept old as dirt, everyone should use.

There are very easy to setup rules on Android to let specific selected contacts through DND mode. I assume apple has this too.

Ok so your parents can’t reach you. They can leave a message.

No, I don't allow notifications for any app or function on any device.

I'm highly technically competent. When I look at my older parents' phones and see the notification hell they're dealing with, I wonder how anyone ever thought notifications were a good idea?!

Back when notifications meant email, IM, and updates they were fine. Now everything wants to grab your attention. So now none of them get my attention, not even calls or text messages.

> I wonder how anyone ever thought notifications were a good idea?

It is a good idea if one assumes notifications is a high signal/noise ratio communications channel where only important stuff gets sent.

Of course, what happened is advertisers discovered this new exciting opportunity to spam people with their offers and drive up "engagement" so now notifications are actively hostile to users to the point they're better off disabled. Just like phone calls: there's no point in picking up the phone when 99% of all calls are automated advertiser calls.

Why are you allowing advertisers to hijack your notifications?

I'm not. I disabled notifications for everything but WhatsApp. That's my point: I couldn't trust any other app because of their spamminess so I just took away their privilege. Had they behaved themselves, I would have allowed them to notify me, but they didn't.

It got to the point my phone carrier started spamming me with ads via SMS so I rooted the phone in order to disable SMS and phone call notifications. I would have uninstalled the telephony apps if I could.

I use notifications, and alarms, and timers all the time.

It’s an accessibility (as in a11y) thing. Notifications are a tool that some of us depend on, and some of us will never need.

Like many people with ADHD I forgot stuff. Important things, non-important things. For so many different reasons, some reasonable other just frustrating.

So when I know now I need to do something in the future, say in 3 hours (like take the clothes out of the washing machine), I’m gonna set a timer. Otherwise you could place a solid bet I’ll forget.

It goes for other things too. App notifications are a critical part of my ability to stay on top of things.

Snoozing is one of the most consequential features to have been added. I used google inbox for this feature alone (then de-googled after they shut it down).

I use Slack’s remind me more than twice a day.

The ability for a different system to act as both time based memory, and an external prompt that I need to look at something takes a huge cognitive load of me.

But, this only works with apps that respect notifications. Those apps (looking at you Uber), that push marketing notifications down the same channel as the critical transactional ones are nothing but enraging.

I’m sure they think it’s good for their numbers, but it breeds a discontent with the brand. Because you’ve taken a communication channel I depend on and made it unreliable. If I can’t know for sure that an Uber notification is time sensitive, I’m going to mute them and stop using the app. But for Uber it’s worse, I’ve learnt they are time sensitive (car is arriving), and when I’ve gotten the marketing notification out of the blue, I’m not in a mood to receive it because I’m wondering why I have an Uber booking, because that’s what I would expect from prior usage.

I do take a fully opt in approach to notifications and I think everyone should. If you’re getting interrupted by a notification it has to be more important than what your currently doing. If not, it’s going to be a negative experience.

So, notifications. They’re a powerful accessibility tool. Which means we’re all gonna configure them differently, and it means abuses the trust of uses who’ve given you permission to interrupt them is something you should treat as a liability not an acceptable cost of pumping your numbers.

Setting a timer yourself to remind you of some future important event is a very different proposition than what most people mean when they say "notifications": allowing an ever-growing constellation of commercially motivated ad sales companies to initiate pings on the phone they carry around 24 hours a day and grab at their attention at any time, for resale purposes.

On the face of it yes, but the bigger point I was trying to make is that some of us have challenges with remembering things and external prompts/interruptions (alarms, timers, notifications) are in that case all the same thing.

If I’m not going to remember myself, or check on something in time to act on it (say a message), I need another system to do it.

But not everyone is like that. So we’re always going to fall on a spectrum between no notifications and all notifications.

I did touch on ads in notifications, they’re violation of the trust in allowing someone to interrupt you. Unless you signed up to be notified about time-sensitive deals, that notifications is going to disappoint.

I just unsubscribed from Marvel Unlimited (and deleted the app) because they don't provide any mechanism for disabling marketing notifications ("Here's an issue of something you've never read!") vs. functional notifications ("Here's an issue of something you've starred!") vs. transactional notifications ("Your subscription is coming up for renewal!"). I understand that, for some people, new issue notifications are a plus, but not giving us a chance to filter out that noise is abusive. It's my phone not your billboard. Anyway, thanks to this thread I went back and checked my notifications settings and a surprising number of them were set not only to allow immediate notifications, but also to "announce" their notifications. Turned all those off.

I've uninstalled a number of apps for doing that. Once they start mixing spam with relevant notifications -- especially if it's an app that depends on relevant notifications -- I'm out.

Sometimes you can't uninstall apps, like Samsung's junk and Bixby notifications that I have exactly negative-infinity use for. I recently discovered an app called Buzzkill[Android] that lets you manage notifications EXTREMELY GRANULARLY and how to (automatically) respond to them, such as dismiss them sight-unseen or perform another action. It is a paid app but cheap, does what it says on the tin, and has been a personal QoL upgrade.

I use notifications almost everywhere, but I also have some variant of ‘Do Not Disturb’ enabled at all times on most of my devices. It’s handy to have a list of new information, but I don’t want it to know about it until I choose to.

On my phone I only have Do Not Disturb enabled when I really don’t want to be disturbed, but otherwise I only allow audio alerts for phone calls; everything else either pops up on my Lock Screen quietly, gets a badge that I can sort out later, or doesn’t matter enough for me to spend any time on unless I open the app.

Here no sounds at all, I have instead priority settings on 4 family contacts which are the only ones which will vibrate on calls/whatsapp. All the rest will register their popup in complete silence for when I feel like checking the phone.

You're the first commenter how actually "likes" notifications it seems... What apps other than IM/email/calendar/... do you allow?

I do the same. Focus modes on iOS are a really good addition!

As everyone tends to use different apps for messaging, I wish there was some sort of universal way to add contacts from any app to an "Always Send Notifications When These People Contact Me But Nobody Else" list. Like, I can mute individuals in Messenger or whatever, but I want to mute everybody but my wife and my parents back in the US in case of emergencies, whether they call me or text me or use Messenger or Whatsapp. That would obviate the need for DnD or silent modes for me, at least.

Do you really need to be notified when your wife likes your Twitter post or your kid posts a photo to Facebook?

They said “for messaging”. Twitter and Facebook aren't messaging apps.

Why stop at notifications?

https://jondouglas.dev/balance-your-digital-well-being/

https://jondouglas.dev/focus-is-a-superpower/

https://jondouglas.dev/fast-brain-slow-mind/

I try to replace my artificial notifications with natural/organic notifications where possible. The only notifications on my phone that I allow are phone calls/texts from certain numbers. I don't want to constantly be in a state of "alertness". I seek serenity from digital devices on a daily basis.

I tell colleagues that Slack is also blocked, both on desktop and my phone. I check it periodically, about every hour or two.

"But what if I need you for something important?!"

There's this thing called a phone

"Well, it's not _that_ important ... I guess"

Amazing how rationality has time to settle in when we stop being impulsive.

I have been advocating and helping many others, ever since I started the idea in 2014[1]. A few years back, in 2019, I went a tad more and went total DND[2]. The exceptions are tiny and very specific instances, and reasoning.

1. https://brajeshwar.com/2014/missing-step-productivity-activi...

2. https://phone.wtf

Yeah, fair and simple advice! Mine was not a complaint about productivity per se, I just can't be bothered clearning them or picking out the ones I need, but I understand where you're coming from.

I started to eliminate notifications from my life when a sound enabled banner notification from a keyboard I had installed on my android phone wanted me to know about all the great features of the keyboard app going from 3.0.1 to 3.0.2 (or whatever minor version).

Anyway, I disabled everywhere except calendar alerts, alarm clock app, and a "favorites" list that is exempt from DnD in my phone.

My preference is for technology to be a tool that I use when I want. It is here for me not the other way around.

On my phone I only have notifications for the phone app, and text. That's it. Nothing else.

On my desktop I have zero notifications.

It's been that way for years, it's perfect.

I'm not a first responder. All things can wait.

Just reading this gives me Zen vibes :D

What about banking or F2A?

I'm curious: What's the use case for those two specific things? I personally don't even have a banking app installed on my phone - I use online banking and/or a desktop banking software. For 2FA, I have an OTP app installed that I simply open whenever I need to do 2FA.

With banking, a lot of it is notifications when money is transacted on your account.

One of my banks (Starling) is app only.

Some F2A I've used only operate using notifications, which while is a bad design, requires notifications to work

Thanks for the reply - makes sense. Just in the interest of sharing (not trying to make an argument here): I tried the "app only" bank account thing and didn't like it. My "fancy fintech bank account" lasted less than a year before I closed it, I think. As for checking my balance and transfers, I only do that every few weeks when I fire up my desktop banking software in order to pull all bank statements and archive them away. I don't think I've ever come across a 2FA thing that was app only (if I did, I probably would just refuse to use the service).

I used to not have a banking app too but my bank made me ;-(

They started to require to type my own account password into websites to be able to pay via credit card! Incredible but true. As this was of course completely unacceptable I resisted for as long as I could. But at some point I had to use my credit card on a website with no other option (it was for a collective present, I couldn't select another website; I could not participate but that would have been incredibly rude and unkind).

It's not too horrible though. The app is much less bad than I expected.

Do you mean the confirmation window that asks you to login with your online banking credentials after after putting in your credit card details in an online shop? The first time I saw that thing, I cringed as well and decided that I didn't really need whatever I was trying to buy at the time (I was lucky that there were no social factors invoved like in your case).

The text app has notifications enabled. The banking app doesn't, but I open it when I need it (which is, extremely rarely, now that many ecommerce websites allow wire transfers).

In IOS even if you disable notifications from unknown senders, when a TFA code arrives it still shows up for you to paste when you're in an app.

Yes, I use notifications from my bank and credit card so I know when someone is taking my money.

The CC company has a fraud dept for that. They can leave a message. It’s important but not critical so can wait twelve hours.

I am more likely to identify a fraudulent transaction than the banks fraud department. If I didn't have these notifications on, in case they don't identify a fraudulent transaction, I'd have to do so myself by reconciling everything manually at the end of the month. That's a lot more effort for me than simply responding to unexpected transaction notifications as they happen.

Ok, I guess that's another important use case! Anything else comes to your mind?

I am currently working on a project where we have 90+% of opt out from push notifications with <10% open rate, and for good reasons.

I am try to build an argument here for my manager haahah

Same here. Those notifications are great. I just disable sounds and vibrations for them.

I use Apple's Scheduled Summary for most notifications (Android may have something similar, but I don't know the platform). Scheduled summary collects notifications and then delivers a summary at a time of my choosing. You can choose which notifications go into the summary and which are delivered immediately.

I turn off notifications for most apps, put non-urgent ones in the summary, and leave only a few to be delivered immediately ( e.g. iMessages from VIP contacts). Then I glance through the summary when it arrives after work and deal with anything that needs a response.

Also, I turn off all browser notifications. I never need them.

Interesting, so you also use features like focus modes?

My phone is always on silent mode, and dnd over night (ops team has standing instructions to always phone any on-call person twice successfully before going to next person). No audio notifications at all, but vibrate is on for phone calls during the day (important work calls, family emergencies etc of course still need to reach me)

No notifications on desktop, ever <shudder>.

Google hangouts and ams messenger can show me pull down "notifications" (message preview) on the phone.

That's not to say I'm inaccessible - I have not missed a call or important message yet. But app notifications have negative use value for me.

I have a severe ADHD, so nearly all notifications are disabled, except for reminders, which I use heavily. This is literally a matter of survival for me.

But I don’t know anyone who doesn’t switch off most of notifications.

My phone, computer, and watch are on silent; I only get notifications on my watch, and almost none:

I enable certain IM senders (kids, partner) and slack (certain channels only). I have an app that reminds me to take my meds through the day. Nothing else.

There are task-specific notifications I would like to enable (e.g. my car is arriving) but when you enable notifications for those apps, the apps spam me at other times. So polling it is.

I never enabled browser notifications.

Facebook is one of those annoying ones. You go in, change your notifications to exactly what you want, and then shortly after Facebook creates a new notification class that's set to default "on". Few rounds of that and it's lost all notification privileges.

> I only get notifications on my watch

This worked really well for me. My phone is always silent/DND, but I get notifications on my watch. If I want to stop getting notifications, I just take off my watch.

No, as they’re a complete distraction from what YOU actually want to do. They are your own personal time waster that FB uses to keep you engaged longer. We’re only in the planet for a finite time that gets less everyday so why would I want to waste my time. You see this most impacting insecure folk who need positive engagement or constant reinforcement of the feedback loop. It’s a complete waste of time.

I'm not quite zero notifications, but I've never installed work e-mail/calendar/slack on my phone. Work notifications are slack direct DMs on my laptop/desktop only. And I sort of condition people to understand that I'm the person who gets things done and I might not respond to you immediately.

If you think you desperately need to be ADHD constantly helping people out immediately with every request they have and this is the way to get forward in your career, you might want to reconsider that. You turn into sort of the helpdesk guy. You can still be the person that does all the extraordinarily hard problems that nobody else can solve, and deliver on the big features, without being the person who is there for instantly answering questions 24/7. If you open yourself up to being ADHD constantly you'll probably never get anything done through being interrupted constantly and you may find yourself stuck at a lower technical level than you want to progress to. Although if you want a management job this is probably the path you want to take.

I'm on the same boat as quite a few posters: I hate notifications and have a hard time understanding how people who pick up their devices all the time get anything done and keep their sanity.

My personal phone is a device with GrapheneOS (no Play Store and no Play services, so not even the temptation to install attention grabbing crap - not that I even have social media accounts anymore). It is used mostly for audiobooks, music, navigation, phone calls, as a device for notetaking, information gathering / referencing - and to have a backup of my most important data near me at all times. The only app I allow notifications on this device for is the one messenger I have installed - which I only use to chat with my partner, a group chat with some of my oldest friends and the very occasinal message to other contacts (almost exclusively to coordinate some real-world activity). At the beginning of my work day, I usually chuck the personal phone in my backpack and only remember to take it out in the evening when I usually have a call with my partner - or when I'd like to listen to some music during a break. If there is an emergency, my partner, my parents, etc. know to call me at work.

My work phone is a bit different. I have it with me at all times when I'm working and have notifications enabled for Matrix/Element (which we use as our team messenger) and for the calendar. Not E-Mail, though. I check that when I'm good and ready.

My partner has a permanent exception to Do Not Disturb mode on both my phones.

On my computers, it's Do Not Disturb / disable notifications all the way. If I want to be informed about stuff, I'll keep the respective app open. During a normal work day, for example, I have Element, Calendar and E-Mail open on a second monitor for glanceability - and I even close those apps depending on the kind of work I'm doing.

Edit: I forgot: I also have my government's disaster warning app installed on my phones and it's allowed notifications - for obvious reasons.

1. Calls/FaceTime/SMS/iMessage (banners and sounds, Mac and iPhone).

2. Calendar reminders (banners only, Mac and iPhone).

3. A bespoke "hello world" iOS app I threw together and installed to enable ad hoc notifications to myself from anywhere via a similarly trivial Web API (banners and sounds, iPhone only).

4. LaunchControl[1] on the Mac has a neat feature that sends a notification whenever a launchd item is added or removed. This is nice to know, and generally only triggers when apps are installed or updated, and on app launch and quit for a few apps like VMware Fusion that only keep their related launchd items loaded while running (banners only, Mac only).

Everything else gets turned off with extreme prejudice.

[1] https://soma-zone.com/LaunchControl/

Whenever an app or website asks me if I want notifications, I mentally substitute the word 'notification' with 'distraction'.

"Do you want to receive distractions from this app?"

Reads very differently and makes the correct answer much more obvious in pretty much every situation. No, no, no and no.

I think the only notifications i care about are steam notifications. Otherwise, i aggressively turn them off. I expect myself to catch up on an application when I use the application.

Maybe the only downside is checking my calendar, email, IM at least once a day instead of letting it inform me of events.

Steam rarely sends notification, if they do its either their 2FA code or your wishlist items on sale.

Valve has a lot of issues, but their apps are not among them. Steam can send me notifications too. They haven’t abused that trust yet.

I have notifications for long(ish) tasks I run on the command line, I get an ephemeral popup dialog window saying that the task is done, other than that, only calls/texts in my phone, and even those, only from some contacts (texts, for calls I do get the sound on every call)

Same here. A long time ago I decided I want to be the one in control of my life, not others. When I want to check my mails etc., I do it - not when someone creates a false sense of urgency.

The only notifications I'm using are for phone calls from selected contacts, mainly my family.

Less discussed but similarly controlling of your life are all the nasty visual tricks apps and services use to grab your attention (bright red notification bubbles) or to annoy you into submission (so you download their mobile app or upgrade to pro).

I've gone the extra mile and set my phone to be entirely in grayscale, and have never been happier.

(Doable on Android at least, look under "Developer Settings")

I rarely mess with notifications. Instead, I go online only when I want to, that too, for maybe 5 or 10 minutes at a stretch. I'm offline by default. Anything urgent shall reach me the old school way: either call or text. I admit disruption when I want to.

For me personally, I feel I DO become more productive when I put the phone on silent and leave it in another room. Generally in a drawer or something. After a few minutes it becomes easier to focus on the task at hand and before I know it I've been producing for an hour and have been in that "flow" state everyone wants to be in. I've been doing this for over a year now and it's like this switch in my brain flips faster and more easily every day.

I have accepted that if I want to veg out and be aimless and distracted (which occasionally is ok) I should have my phone out near me. If I don't, physical distance, the more the better.

I barely even use them on my phone, everyone except close friends and family are muted.

Glad you posted this, it is something for me to think about.

I'm building a wellness mobile app and I make use of mobile notifications for certain reminders.

I am building the app using things that worked for me, and one of those things was notification reminders. I don't think I've ever set up YouTube bell, and I'm usually Do Not Disturb mode. Most of the time, I "miss" my reminders but when I pull down from the top I see what I missed and would act upon them.

One of the challenges for me is that I tend to sometimes get too focused (or completely side-tracked sometimes) and during these times I miss my self-care time.

There is a middle ground, and understanding it requires detangling the nature of notifications by urgency and relevance:

* urgent and relevant: enabled, show me this now. examples are: IM and phone calls and earthquake monitors * urgent and non-relevant: "sale ends in 5 mins!!" * non-urgent but relevant: "your package has been delivered to your mailbox". Use an app like Daywise to BATCH these notifications to arrive at X hour intervals, so you're only checking 24/x times a day * non-urgent non-relevant: disable all these

Can we make a clarification? Are we talking about sound notifications?

First I thought we were talking about silent notifications, like a lock screen display or a display LED etc. But if that's what we're talking about, I don't understand why people here are so annoyed by notifications. My brain filters silent notifications as well as it filters ads - I don't even see them any more.

The only notifications that my brain doesn't filter are the ones with sound, and only one app in my phone can produce sound, which is the alarm.

So how do you get calendar reminder about important event? Same goes, how do you figure out you have new email or IM message?

Does this mean you have to open calendar, email and IM app all the time to find out there is nothing new? Seems like waste of time/energy to not use notification just to show some statement.

I have 24/7 DND mode with notifications only on my watch with email, calendar and IM (and on IM i mute people who bother me too much). Well also SMS, but I'm receiving only verification codes there rarely.

Not the OP, but:

1. General awareness about what's on your plate. You don't need a reminder, you just need to know that you have meeting X at Y hours, or Z appointment on this date.

2. The difference is that you check email/IMs on your terms, which means that you decide when you want to take a break from whatever you're doing to look at and respond to anything in your inbox. If you have notifications on, your focus will keep getting taken away from whatever you're doing. Depending on what you're doing, this may or may not be important to you.

1. I can' keep general awareness with dozens of reminders each day, I'm using calendar reminders to my benefit 20+ years, so i don't have to hold these things in my head and worry about forgetting something.

2. You can check/ignore notifications on your own terms.

It sounds like your workflow works great for you, and that's great!

You asked how some people to live without notifications, and I gave an example of how. That's it.

You may as well ask "how do you know if you have mail" e.g. physical mail.

I see it when I go to leave the house. Maybe I hear the postbox ring.

I don't need an immediate notification of e-mail, it's quite fine to batch it and see if anything interesting is there. Daily, or a few times a day, or maybe after a week, depending on what I'm doing.

I _really_ wish Slack had more fine-grained notification controls. I can ignore ~90% of my Slack notifications, but I have a boss that likes to start huddles at random times with no warning. If I could either filter notifications by person or just get notifications for huddles and calls only, that would be perfect.

I've got every other notification quashed. Calls, IMs from close friends and family, that's all I get on my personal devices. If only I could dial down Slack on my work machine.

I've disabled them on everything but my phone as much as possible. My IPad Pro has none, my MacBook has the bare minimum the system will allow, and my phone only has them for messaging, email and time-sensitive stuff (like food or Amazon delivery).

First thing I do whenever I'm forced to use Slack or anything like it is to disable notifications on anything but direct messages or mentions.

My time is more valuable to me than other people's desire to take it up, especially for anything that isn't urgent.

Yes. My wife and I chat basically all the time, and some of it is timely questions.

If the only way to get a timely response would be to call, then she'd he to call. And i would have to pick up. And maybe she's in a meeting.

Maybe she's presenting something in a meeting and asking me to check if there's any problem with our wifi. She can't call me; she's busy.

But things like YouTube notifications, or "ring the little bell" calls to action. No... Just... Why in the fuck would i want to do that?

Also zero notifications on any and all hardware platforms. All calls/texts are set on silent/Do Not Disturb, with the whitelist allowing a total of five people: my parents, grandma, boss, and one or two others of similar importance. Anything important - they'll reach one of those five people. Anything else, I'll get to within a few days via email.

Cannot imagine living with more stimulation ... already feel like i have too much!

The only notification I've been getting in the last 2+ years is calls. As for everything else, I just open the app/program when I want to check what's there. It means I check my messages when I have a moment free, not when my phone demands it. If anything is urgent then someone can call me.

I always hated pop up notifications and my phone buzzing or making noise, it feels so intrusive as well as being distracting

Notifications I get: IM/SMS/Email, calendar events, train delays (when applicable), payment, catastrophe alert (most of them silent).

The rest I consider spam. And notification spam is the number one issue I see with devices I manage for relatives, etc ("how do I turn this off, I don't know where that comes from, blabla"), which is an improvement over the PC era with its much more horrible phenomena.

On Android I use Do Not Disturb mode but people I really need to hear from (like my elderly mum) are put on a starred list and they get through[1].

I can then turn it off, have all the cached notifications appear, deal with them and then switch on Do Not Disturb again.

1: https://support.google.com/android/answer/9069335

Something great I read once:

    Every time you see 'notifications', replace with the word 'interruptions'.

It really puts it into perspective.

I have notifications enabled only for a select few people (family), everything is silenced. If you need me, leave a voicemail or text, and I'll see it when I next check for it.

Granted, I still check fairly often, but it's when I want to check.

I for one like notifications. I want to know when I get a text message, I want to know when I get pinged on work Slack or discord, I want to know when I get a call, I want to know the second I get an email from a very specific person because they are incredibly busy and sometimes I'm waiting days for that reply.

Unless I'm actively texting someone, that might me a dozen notifications a day.

- I allow selective notifications, but I've disabled all sound and vibrations from them (except for a couple critical contacts on IM). - Absolutely no notifications for email. - All calls come through. Haven't gotten a spam call in years.

For me, this setup allows for a good balance of instantly knowing what's up when checking the phone but without being disturbed.

Pretty much the same. Only standard phone, IM, reminders, calendar, alarms, and also banking apps can notify me. For order tracking I manually turn it on when putting order, and off after receiving, otherwise too much spam, literally 2-3 times a day per app.

Btw, what are notification places other than my phone? A desktop/browser? Always off for everything.

Desktop in particular bugs me... I would love to see usage stats of the macOS notification "area", I'm pretty sure it is only ever tapped by mistake...

Well, at least I am not alone, thanks! haha

I don't even have the "notification center" icon on my Windows 10. And I removed the new email popup alert

Browser notifications are the first thing I disable on any laptop, phone or tablet. Absolutely no legitimate use for those. Abused heavily by all sorts of sites, and enabled by default on phones. It's disgusting. They are why I hate the entire Google suite of "apps" that run inside a browser tab.

Pagerduty is an important notification app for me. But most other, including e-mail, are disabled or just noise.

The only notifications I ever use are IM, SMS and work e-mail (with all work-related stuff only showing up when the client is open) - and this includes my phone. I don't know why would I ever need anything else; maybe aside of calendar - that one I can understand, I just happen to not use it.

I've set my phone so I only receive calls and some texts from people who are close during most of the day. Between 9 and 10 pm I allow the rest, resulting in all notifications received during the day showing up at 9 pm sharp. This makes it easy and quick to just sift through them.

Same. I also haven’t had email installed on my phone since 2012. It was such a life improvement that I can distinctly remember the day when I removed it.

Related: “inbox zero” is a trap. Why would you surrender your willpower to anyone who can reach your inbox?

Turned them all off except for a select few app - WhatsApp, messages and the like, and even then my phone is on silent mode all the time.

I only noticed that i had notifications turned on for Uber, and was notification spammed by them for some sort of promotion - disabled immediately.

Same here,apart from notifications

I am now limiting time on Youtube, twitter and other limitless scrolling site.

We need a review system for this.

I check how many times I unlock my phone in a day and it ranges from 80-120.I wish to reduce this and do more deep work.

I had do not disturb on by accident the whole day yesterday. It was great, it made be wonder if I should enable it permanently. As the technical founder of a startup, I suspect it'll probably be to my detrimental when shit hits the fan.

I recently migrated to a degoogled ROM and since many apps use google for push notifications, I've just been going without. And JTS honestly been quite freeing. If someone needs a quick response they can reach me on signal.

That's just not truth, i use phones without gapps for 5-8 years and hardly missing any notifications, both Whatsapp and Signal can push them, same with various email clients for instance Aquamail I use Business calendar pro and various other app, though I disable most of those to not be bothered. It's actually quite difficult for me to find app which could not push notifications on my no gapps phones.

Calendars and emails usually don’t need push to show notifications. Email clients usually use imap streaming (if supported) or just poll your inbox every x minutes.

We are specifically talking about push via GCM / Apple here. Afaik signal opens a websocket in the background if GCM push is not supported. Or at least that’s how it worked a few years ago.

Google Cloud Messaging features (push) only work when you have gapps installed or use an alternative implementation like microg.

I assume that whatsapp also has some kind of fallback strategy built in.

Which rom are you using?

This has been my experience as well using a degoogled ROM for the first time. I feel I got so much time back. Now I'm really using my phone and not the other way around.

I prefer Session for messaging and for family I ask them to reach me on Telegram FOSS.

No notifications at all - phone is on silent at all times.

Though I do have a good habit of checking messages and emails every hour, so it isn't that bad for others. (Desktop is different, teams / slack is on all the time with popups).

I do the opposite... Desktop is always muted, Slack and Email are on a second monitor, so I can check every hour. Phone slack notifications are set only for mentions

What I would really love is a way to disable all sound notifications on Windows 10 permanently. Right now on calls I get assaulted with sound notifications from random places every 15 minutes. How do I turn this sh!t off!

You need to navigate to the classic Sound control panel, and remove all the sound files for each sound event:

Settings > System > Sound > Related settings > Sound control panel

Then click on the Sounds tab.

1. Go to windows settings by clicking the big gear icon.

2. Type "Focus Assist Settings" in the search box.

3. Click the Alarms only button.

I unsubscribed from all youtube channels. I have a markdown list of links for some channels and check them manually if I want. I'm also trying to remove all newsfeeds/recommendations from everywhere.

Including RSS ?