My greatest good friend messaged me on Fb Messenger. It wasn’t pressing, so I swiped the notification away, making a psychological be aware to answer later. Ten minutes later, Fb sends one other notification. “Reminder: [My friend] despatched you a message.” That is clingy, even for Fb. And it’s not the one app more and more determined for any crumb of consideration.

In simply the final couple months, I’ve personally gotten dozens of what I can solely name desperation notifications. Push alerts from apps that don’t really want something, however would love it if I gave them some consideration anyway. These embody, however will not be practically restricted to, the next:

• The Disney+ app let me know that as a result of I watched The Simpsons, I is likely to be concerned with watching The Simpsons Film (which I additionally lately watched).

• Discord knowledgeable me that somebody in a server I am additionally in up to date their standing, which is, I assume, a factor you are able to do in Discord.

• Venmo would really like me to know I can fund my Kalshi account with my Venmo stability. (I don’t and can by no means have a Kalshi account.)

• Reddit started sending push alerts for information tales from communities I wasn’t subscribed to and had by no means visited.

• Duet despatched an aggressive half-dozen notifications inside quarter-hour of closing the app, together with a number of alerts that learn “She simply likes you.” Which is a surprisingly exasperated tone for a relationship app.

• GrubHub requested me if I needed to order meals, exactly 5 minutes after I ordered meals.

A few of these are clearly simply commercials disguised as alerts—its personal annoying downside—however simply as many appear to be little greater than a reminder that an app exists. And in case you may please open the app and increase its engagement numbers, that might be nice.

Are app notifications actually getting worse?

Wow, I hadn’t considered that, thanks Disney+.
Credit score: Lifehacker

Whereas it’s all the time arduous to quantify vibes-based annoyances, there’s not less than some knowledge to again up the concept firms are getting more and more determined in your notification consideration. In accordance with a 2025 evaluation from the Reuters Institute for the Examine of Journalism, information publishers have more and more relied on push notifications to achieve their audiences, as a option to keep away from relying an excessive amount of on platforms like Google or social media apps.

Nonetheless, this bid for direct consideration comes at a value—and within the midst of an arms race with platforms. In accordance with the Reuters report, 79% of respondents don’t get any information alerts in any respect, and 43% of these are as a result of customers actively disabled the notifications. Worse but, iOS and Android have each experimented with questionably dependable AI summaries of notifications, making them much more annoying to cope with.

This report solely examines one small section of the notifications you may sift via on any given day, however it’s instructive of a broader development. We more and more stay in an consideration financial system, the place seemingly unrelated industries are in competitors in your eyeballs. Which is how you find yourself with firms like Netflix investing in video video games, or the online game business competing with playing websites and porn.

In that context, your notifications change into the frontline within the battle in your consideration. No, it doesn’t take a genius to know that somebody who watched The Simpsons is likely to be concerned with watching The Simpsons. But when a fast notification can remind me to look at extra of the present at the moment, somewhat than play extra Pathologic 3, that’s a win for Disney.

And any win goes to be value it to most firms proper now. Broadly talking, the financial system isn’t doing so scorching. So, if an organization can do one thing to indicate that engagement of their app went up by even 5%, they doubtless will. And sending extra notifications is usually one of many cheaper and simpler methods to juice inside numbers.

How you can lower app notification spam

Credit score: Lifehacker

There’s not less than one silver lining to the entire notification arms race downside: There are a lot of instruments out there to assist get your alerts below management. Some are baked proper into your telephone’s OS, however there are additionally third-party instruments you should utilize to implement some peace and quiet. Listed below are among the greatest choices out there.

Use your telephone’s OS-level settings to handle notifications

Each main smartphone platforms have fairly strong instruments to dictate what sort of alerts you possibly can obtain, and the way disruptive they are often. We have now full guides on instruments for managing your Android and iOS notifications, however even in case you don’t wish to dive too deep into your telephone’s settings, you possibly can slowly whittle away essentially the most annoying alerts as you obtain them.

On Android, you possibly can long-press a notification in your shade to seek out choices to tweak or suppress the alerts. Most notifications will be sorted into both Precedence, Default, or Silent, which behave otherwise relying in your default settings. It’s also possible to faucet the Settings gear icon to dive into the app’s particular notification settings to disable classes of alerts. These will fluctuate by app, however in lots of instances you possibly can disable issues like commercials or information alerts with out turning off messages you really care about.

On iOS, you will discover related instruments by swiping on a notification and tapping Choices. Right here, you’ll discover fast shortcuts to do issues like mute notifications from an app for a brief time frame, or bounce to extra in-depth settings to disable classes of notifications. In my expertise, it’s typically simpler to tweak these settings at any time when I obtain a very annoying alert, somewhat than audit all my notification settings directly.

Discover every app’s notification settings

Most apps have their very own class of notification settings that may be adjusted individually. In some instances, these can overlap with the identical settings you’ll discover utilizing the above technique, however simply as typically, you’ll discover much more toggles that don’t. Although, some apps are shadier than others when it comes to how simple it’s to seek out these settings.

For one instructive instance, within the Reddit app, you possibly can navigate to Settings > Account Settings > Handle notifications to discover a prolonged checklist of potential alerts you possibly can obtain. That’s already fairly buried, however in case you signal into the app with a number of accounts, you’ll must undergo this course of for every account you’re signed into. In any other case, notifications you turned off for one account may nonetheless pop up through one other.

Most apps aren’t fairly this chaotic, however it might probably nonetheless be annoying to dig via all of the tedious menus. In some instances, this is likely to be your solely choice, although. On Android, Reddit solely has one notification class utilizing the earlier technique, that means you possibly can solely flip all notifications on or off directly. So, in case you’re not discovering the instruments that you must selectively mute sure alerts within the OS-level settings, it is likely to be value digging via the app’s menus.

When all else fails, use third-party instruments

It shouldn’t actually be vital to put in an app simply to get different apps to close up, but when we should, then we should. BuzzKill, for Android, is a straightforward $4 app that provides you extra strong instruments to filter, handle, or suppress notifications than any of the built-in notification administration settings.

What units BuzzKill aside is that, on high of filtering notifications by which app is sending them, it might probably additionally filter alerts by issues like phrases they include, whether or not they have a picture connected, or whether or not they’re a part of a bunch chat. So, if you wish to preserve getting information alerts, however you’re simply sick of listening to about that one man who’s all the time within the headlines for some purpose, you possibly can selectively filter these out.

Sadly, this one’s more likely to keep Android solely, as iOS typically retains apps in tighter sandboxes. BuzzKill wants to have the ability to learn notifications from different apps to be able to filter them, and that’s not one thing iOS typically permits apps to do. So, in case you’re within the Apple ecosystem, you’ll have to stay with built-in instruments for now.

Extra broadly, it can also’t harm to let app builders know while you’re irritated by their incessant pings. Firms may attempt to increase their engagement by testing how a lot they will poke your consideration span earlier than you flip them off (or uninstall the app) fully. However turning off pointless alerts can ship a sign that they’ve gone too far within the mistaken route. Sending suggestions stories, the place potential, can doubtlessly ship a good stronger sign.