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Comment by badc0ffee | Hacker News Reader

> Turn off every notification that isn’t actionable or joyful to you.

I have notifications on for Uber Eats because I want updates when I order a food delivery. Of course, the app takes this opportunity to randomly (though infrequently) send me ad notifications during the other 98% of the time. Just this past week I've seen notifications for getting my Easter shopping done, and something for "National Burrito Day" which I'm sure is totally a real thing.

Unfortunately, lots of apps are like this. But are they annoying or frequent enough that I will turn off notifications? No, because I'd rather put up with it than have to remember to turn them back on the next time I order something.

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I solve that in a hilarious way: by uninstalling the app when I’m not using it. Works perfectly, other than some slight sign-in friction, for e.g. airlines, Uber/Etsy, and so on. But I’d rather suffer through logging in with a saved password than receive notification spam — I can respect that others prefer the opposite way.

> I solve that in a hilarious way: by uninstalling the app when I’m not using it.

Ha, I do the same thing!

Nothing ever seems to save my login session more than 10 minutes anymore, so it doesn't even seem like much extra friction.

[Buzzkill] for android lets you completely control if you get specific notifications at all or with sound etc. I bunch up noisy text threads in once-a-day chunks, silence all notifications not about/from nuclear family from sleep to wake, etc.

It really made me appreciate that, when I have to have my phone, notifications are like an extra obnoxious form of e-mail with all of its problems. [Buzzkill] gives me the phone equivalent of Inbox Zero.

[Buzzkill]: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.samruston....

The filtering looks fairly powerful, but I wonder if I could have it hide notifications from apps that I haven't interacted with in 24 hours. I would do that for ALL of the delivery and transportation apps.

(iOS users, when you force quit an app, I believe that prevents it from initiating push notifications until you reopen it. Or it used to, I haven’t tested recently and perhaps it doesn’t stop modern ads? Data needed.)

It doesn't seem to work that way today.

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