I don’t have notifications enabled, nowhere and never
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?
164 comments
[ 5.1 ms ] story [ 179 ms ] threadBtw, what are notification places other than my phone? A desktop/browser? Always off for everything.
Well, at least I am not alone, thanks! haha
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.
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.
1. https://brajeshwar.com/2014/missing-step-productivity-activi...
2. https://phone.wtf
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.
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.
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
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).
There's a lot of "I turn most of them off" here. In parallel, notifications are regularly talked about as a major sticking point around web vs native apps (because Apple). If we, here, aren't using them, why are we building customer-facing tools around them?
I've been working with iOS apps for 10 years or so now, I've seen apps where push notifications alone drive 20%+ of the revenue, and other projects where the opt-out rate is ~90% with an open rate of ~10% (meaning literally 99% of users ignore the notification)
The only notifications I'm using are for phone calls from selected contacts, mainly my family.
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")
Only exception is for phone, some IM (not all), and some mail.
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
But I don’t know anyone who doesn’t switch off most of notifications.
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.
I prefer Session for messaging and for family I ask them to reach me on Telegram FOSS.
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.
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.
2. You can check/ignore notifications on your own terms.
You asked how some people to live without notifications, and I gave an example of how. That's it.
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'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.
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.
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 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.
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT212608
https://www.theverge.com/2019/9/26/20883331/iphone-do-not-di...
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT207099
Concept old as dirt, everyone should use.
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.
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.
i've become accustomed to not checking it.
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.
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.
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.)
> 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.
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?
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
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.
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 :)
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.
OP can also schedule time (and place?) to chat to others.
- 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
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 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
* 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
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.
I only noticed that i had notifications turned on for Uber, and was notification spammed by them for some sort of promotion - disabled immediately.
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.