Hacker News Reader

Comment by lotsofpulp | Hacker News Reader

I like to turn off all notifications (noise, vibration, and lock screen) other than audio calls. All other messaging is asynchronous and shouldn’t be important enough to disturb your focus. On iOS, I even move the apps that have the little red numeric notification circle to a different page than the first, so I don’t see it until I want to see it.

View on HN

You can turn the little red bubbles off.

Go to Settings Search for notifications Go to the specific app and turn off Badges

My normal routine is that turn them all off, then go back and turn on the specific ones I want. But it turn off the badges for virtually all of them.

Thanks, I wasn’t aware that’s what a badge was!

Having a home page free of little red circles changes how you look at your device. It is freeing and a breath of fresh air. It is amazing what a psychological impact these red badges have over us.

I recently turned off all notifications. Messaging apps can still have badges. As a former developer for a notification sending product I feel stunned at how much I’m preferring this setup.

Just removing my email from the home page so I have to go to a web interface instead has made me far less neurotic about checking it. Before I’d check hourly, now I check it a couple times a week. And nothing bad has happened because of it.

You can also set the phone to monochrome: the bubbles are still there, but they aren't red, which makes then much less distracting.

I do sort of a compromise for my messaging apps. I silence all group chats but leave notifications on for direct messages.

This way I get avoid the distraction of group banter while still being able to be contacted directly when something more important comes up.

I shut almost everything down, but for messaging, too many of my friends are busy much of the time. So if we are to have a conversation, I can't see their first text nine hours later.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com