My second proposal — and this is a wild one — is that promotional notifications should just not be allowed. Or you can opt in to them if you desperately want to hear from the Starbucks app every single day, but you should have to go out of your way to do that and should not be the default behavior when you choose “allow notifications.” Just an idea!
The author calls out the Starbucks app here, but doesn’t mention how blatantly dark-patterned its notifications really are. Android allows apps to set up multiple notification channels, so you can selectively prioritize (or, more often, mute or block) notifications based on their content. Starbucks uses this feature… to create a single channel called “Promotions & order status”. You wanted to know when your order’s ready? Fuck you and your concentration, get double stars today!
I appreciate the notification controls Android gives me, and I use them aggressively. If an app pushes a notification that doesn’t actually require my attention, I block that channel, and if it does it again, I block notifications for the whole app. I agree with the author, though: I shouldn’t need to do that.
The use of a single channel should be against the rules for commerce apps.
They’d probably get around that by having a ‘Promotions and Order status’ channel and a random / unused one like an ‘App update available’ channel. Promotional notifications should just really be banned.
It should be enough for the Play Store to require any promotional notifications to go to an exclusively promotional channel for users to manage as they please.
Next stage, would be a “report notification” option, so Google could suspend the app for spamming. That would curb the dark pattern behavior quite quickly.
Why do you feel the need to install an app for a coffee shop?
Not OP but I often get 50% off promo for any beverage from Starbucks app.
Because I don’t want to be guilted into the tip button
Email subscriptions also sometimes have that, with bonus points for several vague and similar sounding categories, and emails not mentioning what category they’re in.
Just don’t visit Starbucks lmao what the fuck is even the issue here
I have a simple rule. If I install an app and it shows me any notification I don’t want to see, I immediately block it from having permission to do that.
Not everyone has figured you can do that by long pressing the offending notification
Same… Have done for ages now. Don’t know how anyone puts up with the default behaviour.
The default now is that apps have to first request notification permissions, on both iOS and Android.
Most users are blindly accepting any and all requests by apps.
Yeah but that’s really their problem. I mean, the OS literally asks them to allow it. What more can you do?
At least Android also proactively asks them whether to disable notifications for an app if they always swipe them away, or if they haven’t used the app in a long time.
For me, apps do not get to notify me unless it’s time sensitive.
The problem is when my food delivery app, or LinkedIn sends me ads when I just want messages.
It’s annoying to not be able to only receive messages.
Apps get a one strike rule. The minute I get a notification I don’t want, that app doesn’t get to send me notifications anymore
I use Tasker to filter out notifications
Buzzkill is another good one.
LinkedIn has messages? Maybe I don’t use it much, but it seemed like it had ads, and self-promoting messages, or more ads.
Out of my 10000 notifications I ignore, there’s one message… and that’s from the LinkedIn team.
Aren’t messages the only point of LinkedIn? You create a profile which is basically your CV, set it to “looking for work”, and wait for recruiters to message you, right?
I’ve switched off the “looking for work” after the n-th recruiter who hadn’t even bothered reading my profile. I was under the impression that LinkedIn should also work as a social network for people to “word of mouth” recommend each other, or openings at wherever they work, but all I got was “coach” and “courses” type spam.
That is the trouble with relying on recruiters, there’s essentially no bar to entry so the industry is flooded with talentless chancers
Yeah, I needed to have it on for a week for work stuff. And it kept giving me random notifications about news and stuff. I couldn’t figure it out.
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Both on Android, and iOS, opting out of notifications solves most of the problems. You can do all on your own time without constant nagging, and leave notifications on for the communication channels you really need.
However, what I hate with passion are shopping and delivery apps that suffer with disabled notifications (I don’t know when things arrive, and that would ideally be good to know within seconds), but enabled notifications mean that there would be a lot of spam notifications about ordering and buying more.
Yeah, no way to lose my trust faster than abusing your notification privileges to send me spam.
Some apps let you customize notifications, some let the OS customize them… some get muted, and some uninstalled.
For example, Amazon lets you keep the account and delivery notifications, but disable the promotional ones.
AliExpress is the worst at this. Which category should I disable? AliExpress, aliexpress, Chat or message push? And even if I figured it out, there’s no way to stop store spammers from sending you useless messages constantly, detracting from actual sellers with questions.
shopping and delivery apps
So don’t use 'em.
If something’s going to try to grab my attention, it had better be worth my while. I block as many notifications as I can, both on my phone and my computer. I also try to avoid using apps for things unless I have to.
But don’t you want to open this website in our app so that we can better track you?
God I hate reddits mobile website, especially when you try to view an nsfw post
Swap the “www” in the url for “old”. Desktop site but it doesn’t stop you viewing NSFW content.
Just abandon the site altogether. They do have good content but they’re user hostile.
I know. That’s what I always do but navigating a desktop site on mobile is horrible :(
On android long press a notification and it’ll show you which category of notification it is from that app, with the ability to disable just that one category if desired. E.g. advertisements and feedback reminders
Some apps don’t export the category, but still let you disable it from inside the app. In my book, they get a close pass.
On Android you need to opt in to notifications for every app you install. Just opt out :)
Or, be like me and keep your phone on do not disturb(except calls from contacts). Doing this was one of the most significant quality of life improvements for me over the last few years.
Yeah that’s what I’ve done. I’ve gotten very picky about which apps I allow to notify me of things. A week or two of turning off all the ones you don’t want and your phone gets quiet real quick.
If you’re on IOS, the Focus feature is great. I use it primarily for sleep to turn off all notifications except for calls (in case of emergencies). But you can basically configure multiple profiles with different notification settings. Also, whenever I install a new app on my phone, I turn notifications off unless it’s a time sensitive app like a messaging app.
My work phone is an iPhone and I love this feature. The moment it’s past work hours I no longer get buzzed for any notifications, and I only see direct messages on the home screen
Android’s Do Not Disturb feature is also like this. You only get notifications from calls, alarms and apps you specifically allow.
That’s interesting and I’ve never heard of the focus feature (I don’t use my phone very much). Where do I find the focus feature?
I was going to try to explain it, but realized I’m not very good at calling menus and such their proper names. So whatever I tell you wouldn’t be very helpful.
https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/turn-a-focus-on-or-off-iph5c3f5b77b/ios
Apple also has a YouTube video that’s about 5 minutes long. The article is probably faster.
I’m not a power user, so I don’t use the majority of features on my phone. I generally set my “do not disturb” at bedtime. It allows calls through from my favorite contact list and my morning alarm. I have friends that set focus time and they love it.
Edit to add to the conversation. I disable all notifications, except for things I really want: calls, FaceTime, texts and to update my food diary if I haven’t done so before 2pm.
When I need to use Uber, I just keep watch on the app. I guess I’m a bit of a psychopath. But when I’m waiting for a car, I like to watch it move on the map. There’s nothing else I would use that would need me to have a notification.
Thanks so much!
Seconding the use of this feature as well. I took it a bit further and took 5 minutes to set up a “Personal” focus mode, active only in the weekends where all work-related apps, mail, calls, etc. cannot send me notifications. In my work there are some serious boundary issues, so this helps me a lot with anxiety and stress.
Notification controls on android are pretty great in my experience.
Most apps (good ones anyway) breakdown different types of notifications, and you can turn off the ones you don’t want. And if they don’t, you can just turn off all notifications for that app entirely.
It all works pretty well.
My rule has always been people can notify me, but bots/apps cannot. If I see a notification not from a person, it gets disabled. If it’s something I can practically do on a website, I don’t download the app.
This except for twitch streams
That’s a human action anyway though… Not a “it’s been a while since you opened our app time to drag you back” notification
True, not a personal human action though. I pretty much always want to see messages from people, but most of the time don’t care about stream notifications
BuzzKill is great for wrangling your notifications. Match a word or phrase and group them, snooze them, set special vibration patterns, whatever.
Install app. Start app. “Allow notifications?” No.
Does iOS not do this?
Apps that I do allow notifications: when they become annoying I go to the notification, long hold > settings > notification categories. If they only have one category and don’t let me fine tune then I don’t need that app or just don’t need notifications from it. Back to settings I have other ways to customize that can make them less annoying like silence them.
The article has some valid points about wanting certain kinds of notifications from an app, and hating the spam notifications those apps send.
However, iOS does indeed allow you to grant or deny an app notifications permission on first launch, and my default is to always deny.
The only apps I allow notifications for are phone, calendar, messages, my tasks, and my automations (shortcuts and some associated apps)
iOS does that the first time you open the app. An app never opened can’t send notifications (it wouldn’t have registered).
I don’t really have any issues with it. Samsung has very fine-grained controls and most apps I simply don’t grant notification permissions at all. Also I put every single chat group in Whatsapp, Telegram etc on Mute by default which helps a lot against overload.
By the way, I give it a year or so by when phones can run a local AI to automatically filter the notifications you’re interested in.
Yeah I feel like they neglected to show how much more of a problem on iOS this is than Android.
On Android apps typically have their push notifications divided into different types and can almost always turn off the marketing notifications for an app while leaving the important ones on.
I dont see even half of these notifications on Android.
On Android apps typically have their push notifications divided into different types and can almost always turn off the marketing notifications for an app while leaving the important ones on.
Oh, iOS doesn’t have this? I didn’t realise. Android has had this for a good few releases now and I love that.
I turned off all notifications for every app except Signal
I do a similar thing, enabling only the apps I want notifications, and I run “adb shell settings put global heads_up_notifications_enabled 0” to stop those annoying popups interrupting me. This should have been an option available in the configs, imo.
I actually like these popups, but only if they’re coming from notifications that I actually want to see. But it’s really weird that the option to turn them off is only accessible via adb, even iOS has this feature.
