We live in a day when everyone is checking 15 different means of communication constantly so that they get the most recent update on their friends lives. Want to stop the madness? Manage your notifications.
When it comes down to it, not all apps should be allowed to interrupt your day. As I look through the possible apps on my phone that can provide notifications, I’m astonished at some of the ones listed:
Fandango
Dictionary
Every. Single. Game.
eBay
Flickr
iCatcher
LinkedIn
Shazam
And the list goes on.
If you want to keep the “noise” of constant notifications out of your life, you have to decide which of these are truly important. I, for example, get alerts for only 5 apps: Messages (texting), Phone, Google Voice, FaceTime, and Reminders. I receive badge icons for a few others (like my todo list and habits list), but not for any social media or games especially.
I use to receive alerts and badges for many apps, until I realized how this was cutting into my normal day-to-day life, and especially decreasing my productivity. If you’re getting sick of how many alerts you have as well, here’s two steps for you to take:
Remove alerts from unnecessary apps
For the iPhone, you can find this under: “Settings” and then “Notifications.” Here, you see every app on your phone and if they currently have any notifications set. The options are:
- Banners – non-obtrusive popup at the top that will go away in a few seconds.
- Alerts – these popups are front and center and will stay there and keep you from doing anything else on your phone until you either choose to act on the alert, or ignore it.
You also have the choice to have it show in the notification center, if the notification will give a sound, have a badge icon on your home screen, or if it’ll show up on your lock screen.
Keep future apps from giving notifications
One of the best features of the iPhone is that when you open an app for the first time, it’ll ask you if you want to receive notifications. By choosing “don’t allow” on 99% of apps, you’ll save yourself the hassle of being bombarded with notifications, to only go into the notification center and remove all of the notifications that you’ve allowed.
I hope this helps you keep your notifications at a reasonable level and in a way that stays useful for you!