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Comment by zaptheimpaler | Hacker News Reader

80% of the battle is notifications but iOS really sucks at this compared to Android. On Android, I could use an app like Uber, keep the important notifications on like driver/delivery arrived but turn off all the marketing trash. On iOS all you can do is turn on or off all notifications, so if you need certain notifications from an app they get a free pass to spam you all they want :/ The entire idea of any random being able to spam messages onto your phone and make it beep without consent and fine grained control is insane.

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Apple used to forbid advertising push notifications completely but then when they pivoted to services they started doing it themselves and eventually the hipocracy got to be too much for even them and they started allowing it with no decent way to discern them

(hipocracy → hypocrisy)

That’s still miles away from being able to filter or categorize notifications by regexps or keywords at least. Both systems are designed for an “average idiot”, and you feel exactly like this using either. Btw, I remember that apps abused the system you mentioned or used it in a way which was annoying (e.g. a messenger not choosing my default beep for every new chat and instead using system default).

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That’s still miles away from being able to filter or categorize notifications by regexps or keywords at least.

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Well, you can do it with apps like FilterBox

Honestly, I’m torn between “android power users can do so much” and “a regular app can access notifications system-wide, wtf”. How does it work?

There's a permission with a scary warning that it needs to request and be granted to read your notifications.

Yeah, same with stuff that can interact and register what is on the screen

Like a few pokemon go add-ons that can read what's on your screen and be a overlay (to distinguish good pokemon from bad)

Android apps can request very powerful permissions, but those permissions are specific, explicit and revocable. There's a fundamental trade-off between power and risk, but I think the Android security model handles that trade-off quite well.

https://developer.android.com/guide/topics/permissions/overv...

https://developer.android.com/reference/android/Manifest.per...

My #1 issue is that I'd love to grant an app powerful permissions if I can ensure it doesn't have internet access. But default Android doesn't expose the network permission (which exists and is accessible in ROMs like LineageOS)

Of course if this was exposed then people would start blocking the Google data vaccum - and that's bad for business

In the Uber app, click on person icon in top-right corner, go to "Privacy and Data" tab, open "Privacy Center" and you should be able to turn off ads and promos.

to disable spam notification from the uber app: account > settings > communication > push notifications > uncheck all

one more: account > settings > privacy > offers and promos > allow personalised set to Off

yes, apple needs to fix this.

And in the Uber Eats app, it’s Account > Communication to disable all the annoying notifications.

Oh, how much I hate the Uber notifications. Thanks for the example. They are a perfect example of abusing the system.

I used Uber once, then it woke me up with a notification in the middle of the following night. So I deleted it. I still have Lyft though, without problems.

Why do you have notifications enabled during the middle of the night?

On-call

That's why I disabled all notifications, including the ones from taxi apps. When you think of it, they're completely unnecessary as you can track the moment of the car in (near) realtime anyway, so for these 3 minutes between ordering a car and it arriving I can live without any notifications. Also, for me the "Your driver has arrived" is not that useful anyway as I need a minute or two to actually reach the taxi starting from putting my shoes on etc., so even this notification is suboptimal.

I’ve never used an android phone so I’m curious… isn’t the categorization of such notifications totally up to the developer? I don’t see any other way it could work unless the OS is doing some ML on the notifications.

If I’m an app developer I could just lie and say all my marketing trash notifications are actually time sensitive/important so that you’ll still receive them. Apple has a similar thing and it’s only a soft policy (that an app reviewer would have to catch) that prevents developers from abusing it.

If it really is up to the app developer to categorize their notifications so that you can disable categories, then it sounds like it’s just a simplified way of managing individual apps’ notification preferences, no? (Not that that’s a bad thing, I wish iOS had this.)

It is up to the developers, and most of them play ball from what I've seen. What I can tell you from a user perspective is that if they don't categorize their notifications properly, I will at the very least block all their notifications, or uninstall and look for an alternative app if possible. Maybe a developer can weigh in on the incentives this behavior creates, in terms of lost engagement or userbase

> I’ve never used an android phone so I’m curious… isn’t the categorization of such notifications totally up to the developer

Yes, but any popular app will have implemented it.

> If I’m an app developer I could just lie and say all my marketing trash notifications are actually time sensitive/important so that you’ll still receive them

In those cases, your users would come to distrust your app. I reckon, only a negligible percentage of 3b Android users ever turn any notification off. More likely that some have learnt to ignore them altogether (banner blindness); swipe left to dismiss those isn't exactly as hostile as cookie banners are. Or, worse uninstall your "misbehaving" app (some are annoyed by notifications).

It's up to app developers, and some of them indeed just straight up lie with their categorization. Moovit and all dating apps come to mind. They implemented _some_ categories, but none useful – nothing that lets you separate wheat from the chaff

iOS actually has two kinds of notifications. Normal and time sensitive (urgent). It’s app developers which abuse the mechanism. It’s not one size fits all.

Can’t this be handled by switching off Lock Screen notifications but keeping time sensitive ones on?

I take your core point but your specific example I think is handled by that.

Are time sensitive notifications new? I’ve never heard of them but the setting is there for me.

Using Uber as the example if I turn off Lock Screen notifications and turn on time sensitive notifications then will I get no marketing notifications, and only notifications about my driver turning up?

Been there for atleast 4 years iirc

> if I turn off Lock Screen notifications and turn on time sensitive notifications then will I get no marketing notifications, and only notifications about my driver turning up?

It's up to the app developer, they get to mark notifications as time sensitive or not. So if someone decides that because a coupon is expiring soon it's "time sensitive" to ping you about it, then they can mark it as such. Hypothetically Apple could frown on this in app review, but it isn't something app reviewers are likely to be able to reliably catch.

Same is true on Android. Uber lets you disable annoying notifications in App or through settings because otherwise fewer people would use it.

I have my Uber set that way, and yes, I just get the driver stuff.

Uber eats though, I can never seem to get right, and it tries to spam a lot more. So I still agree with the original point

Uber Eats is the worst. In the app, Account > Communication is where they have you auto opted-in to endless promotional garbage.

Not true about iOS. You can make a DnD profile and let any apps you want through the filter. I use this all the time.

That's not what they're talking about. On Android, notifications have a "channel". So you can disallow certain types of notifications while still allowing others through.

This also applies to Apple's focus modes which he was mentioning.

So with Focus Modes, I can allow notifications about delivery from Uber Eats while disallowing notifications about random deals from Uber Eats?

no you can't, it's kind of all or nothing.

Not true. During the creation of a custom Focus mode you can choose the notifications you want, either people or apps (or both).

Yes, you can. You can whitelist apps.

> You can whitelist apps.

There was 1 app in their question.

you're misreading the comment. this a about filtering the kind of notification from a single app.

notifications from a single app are split by category, and you can disable in the phone settings notifications from a single category will keeping the rest for a single app. (though this categorizing is done by the app dev not you, so the dev can mix annoying stuff with the useful)

You can always just use the webapps and have things like uber text you.

For the "dumb phone" target audience this probably won't work.

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