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Comment by laingc | Hacker News Reader

I am genuinely curious about this. I prefer native apps to web apps, but I have notifications disabled for every app I install except those that my wife and parents use to contact me. I’m sure I’m not alone in this behaviour - I hate notifications and any workflow model based around them.

Is my viewpoint very uncommon? Are notifications generally used and loved by users? Do app developers have good stats about this?

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Thinking as a fellow notification disabler, and having no data, just intuition: People want their attention to be tapped. I am not exactly sure why that is (although I am sure that it can't be good) but notifications are a tap on peoples attention.

Building certain apps without notifications seems like it would simply not be acceptable to must users. Most phone apps still vibrate or ring – that's basically a notification. I would go as far as saying its uniquely distracting notification is the primary feature of the phone app but, at the very least, a phone without one would be something very different. And since messengers basically compete with phone apps now, for most people that would probably not work.

It's not an uncommon viewpoint. But the fact of the matter is that without notifications it is hard to build a habitual trigger loop to re-engage users (a lot of things just fall out of mind and sometimes you'd like a reminder or a notification of something special). If you are careful with what type of, how many, and how you send notifications, then not as many users will disable them.

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