Comment by joshstrange | Hacker News Reader

Comment by joshstrange | Hacker News Reader

I agree that not all notifications are equal and it sucks that our options for notifications from an app are normally binary (on/off). Some apps allow you to pick/choose the types of notifications you get but the problem still remains that my phone treats them all the same regardless of if it's a CNN announcement of a shooting or magic piano has a new song (I've since disabled MP's notifications completely).

I say this all with no solution to put forth. I'm betting users would not be happy having to assign a priority level to each app and furthermore not all notifications from an app are of equal importance (ie. IFTTT SMS vs iMessage from my Mom).

One thing, unrelated, that I hate about notifications (that IMHo greatly diminishes my use of them in iOS) is the fact that in the notification center they are grouped by app which is one of the stupidest things I've seen in iOS. I want my notifications weaved together and sorted by time not by app THEN by time. Under iOS current implementation you NC could look like this:

  * GMAIL

    * 1 min ago - Blah blah blah

    * 5 days ago - Yada yada yada

    * 10 days ago - Bippity boppity boo

  * MESSAGES

    * 2 min ago - URGENT MESSAGE

    * 3 min ago - ANOTHER URGENT MESSAGE

That's just stupid, it should be:

  * GMAIL - 1 min ago - Blah blah blah

  * MESSAGES - 2 min ago - URGENT MESSAGE

  * MESSAGES - 3 min ago - ANOTHER URGENT MESSAGE

  * GMAIL - 5 days ago - Yada yada yada

  * GMAIL - 10 days ago - Bippity boppity boo

This is just a simple example but throw a few more apps in there and it's not unheard of to have something that happened 1-2 minutes ago buried a few swipes down to get past other app's notifications.

Android lets you manage what apps you consider to have "priority notifications" and filter accordingly, but managing notifications like that is a pretty awful user experience.

I don't have any alternative suggestions either. There's a mismatch in motivations - the app makers want you to open their notification, so you can trust them to prioritise notifications.

Android Apps already have the ability to prioritize notifications, and at least a couple get it right. Very few apps go out of their way to give themself a high priority they don't need (I've not encountered any as far as I know)

That previous post should say "can't", not "can", ha.

I have the exact same complaint about ios notifications. This is definitely one area where the Android experience is far superior (it does what you suggested)

Yeah, I've seriously looked at Android because of this reason (among others). I'm jailbroken and I really wish there was a JB tweak to get this styling. I'd easily pay up to $10 for it.

I like the notifications grouped by app, it lets me scan and clear an entire app in one go, vs clearing each individual line. Less labour, less friction, more likely that I'll use notifications.

I've ordered the apps to show the app on top which I'm expecting important info from.

Tbh, I've almost all notifications off as well, my default for almost any new app asking to notify me is DENY.

In app choices of which sort of notifications you'd like to receive would be great, whether in the app itself or in system settings.app in the apps settings (ideally they would reflect). But failing that, it's mostly off except for anything that is actually important, then ordered by app importance.

Interesting perspective. I prefer the opposite. Then again I try to only allow people to notify me for the most part (phone and messages app) and disallow other apps (like games, real estate, social, etc) anything but badges. I guess this means my approach is more like "What is up with mail?" vs "What happened in the last 5 minutes across all apps on my device?"

Sounds like you want the BlackBerry hub :-P It's got both forms of views ;-)

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