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PaperclipPerfector  13d ago (text post)   3482 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for April 21, 2024

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

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Phone apps are getting really aggressive lately about constantly sending useless notifications. They make it extremely difficult to figure out how to turn them off if they even let you. Threads is especially bad about this. Is there a guide somewhere on how to disable notifications?

The more general problem I've been having lately is that settings menus are now totally unintuitive. I used to be able to find something by just looking through the menu, but now, no matter what aim looking for, I almost always have to Google it, and half the time the instructions will be wrong because the app developers seem to reorganize their menus at least once a year.

Why do they do this? I get far more utility out of the layout of an app staying the same than I do out of any design changes, usually.

You aren’t the typical user and A/B testing probably shows the typical user totally does order takeout food when the takeout app sends a push notification

Android or iPhone?

Haven't had much trouble disabling android notifications. Its all handled in a central area, and android routinely asks me if I want to remove permissions for apps I don't use.

Android

Are you getting phone game 🎮 recommendations from Samsung?

No, it's a Pixel 6 Pro.

Hold down or slide on the notification to go to the notification controls for that app. There, you should ideally have an itemized list of notification categories and you can switch them or just disable all of them for that app.

You can look for the app in the notification manager of the android settings too.

I'm confused; notification settings aren't controlled within the app on Android, they're on the app info settings page which is identical for every app and allows you to disable types of notifications or all notifications for an app. Of course, the app might have overly coarse categories or lie about its notification categories, so you might have to disable more notifications than you intended, I guess.

This is not correct. Where are you getting your information?

That is correct. I'm not sure why you are saying it isn't. For at least a couple of Android versions, you can control notifications on a system level. Go into the system settings for the app (where you would go to control the permissions it has, or to force stop it), and one of the options will be for "Notifications". You will get a screen that looks like the attached image, and you can turn notifications off wholesale or by category.

As @token_progressive says, it's not perfect because it's up to the app to accurately categorize the notifications it can send. But this functionality does exist at the OS level.

/images/17139056367605028.webp

I'm saying it isn't because you can control notifications within apps on Android. For example, on Instagram, I can click my face on the bottom left, then the three lines at the top left, and then notifications. Every app has something like this.

In Instagram's case, controlling notifications through the OS doesn't work because they're labelled too vaguely. They don't even mention Threads.

It does "work" although it might not be at the granularity you want it to be as SF said.

On my Android phone, I can long-press any app notification, which changes that notification to a menu of options on how to treat that kind of notification, as well as a button to go into the settings to control all notifications for that particular app. Perhaps you have an older version of Android?

I have Android 14, but I didn't know it had this ability.

I agree with your general sentiment, but I think he's right? Source: Settings -> Notifications -> App Settings?

I'm not disputing that you can control notifications from within Android's settings. I'm disputing that you can't control from within apps.

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