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Comment by night-rider | Hacker News Reader

I only care about NO notifications. Disabling all notifications is the first step to more saner approaches to technology. I turned my digital life into a pull medium where I check SMS messages etc when I want to, and not having real-time notifications of every little event gives me more peace. It’s a form of digital veganism that I employ. Turn your digital life into pull mediums instead of push.

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The subject of the article is about apps bundling time sensitive notifications that you can’t realistically disable with promotions.

You can turn off most notifications for a calmer life, but when you order an Uber you need to know if it’s arriving or if the driver sent you an important message.

Granted I don't live in an urban area and so don't use these apps all the much, but typically when I want an Uber or to order something with Doordash, or whatever, I'll install the app only long enough to use the service, and then uninstall it. And my rule for apps that stay on my phone (and there are not many) is that they get one chance. The first promotion notification I get, either all notifications get disabled or the app gets uninstalled.

Keeping the app in foreground or checking it every few minutes is usually not too big of a deal in my experience.

I think this only works when you are alone. Once you miss a few important notifications from your friends/spouse/kids/parents, like "the place A was closed, we went to B", you'll want to reconsider.

I've been running with notifications disabled device-wide for at least a few years now (iOS's Do Not Disturb mode) and it's been great. No notifications, no texts, no phone calls. I use my device when I want to, not when a rando app developer or rando texter/caller wants me to use it. It's been all upside. My phone is back to being a tool I use and then put away, rather than me being its tool and doing its bidding.

Same here, have turned off all app notifications. Email set to only notify for a short list of about 10-15 people who I regularly communicate with.

A more practical solution is to only let human-generated notifications through and disable everything else. Calls & texts (if you are lucky enough to not get spam, otherwise change your number or use your spam-free third-party messenger of choice) are OK, everything else is disabled.

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