If you pull down the notification panel on your Android phone to see an endless list of spammed notifications, you can do a few things about it and avoid the need to clear unnecessary notifications every time. Irrelevant notifications are not only bad for aesthetics but also increase the chances of you missing out on actually important notifications, thus affecting your productivity. Recently, while chatting with an elderly person I realised that many people may do not know that Android lets users selectively block particular kinds of notifications from apps. You can also block unwanted notifications from an app without needing to uninstall the app altogether. In today’s edition of ExpressBasics, we will look at how you can block unwanted notifications from apps, both selectively and completely. How to block notifications from an app completely Step 1: To completely block all notifications from an app, simply long press on the notification and you should see details on the app sending it out as well as a small gear-shaped settings icon on the top left. Click on it. Step 2: This will take you to the notification settings page for that particular app. Here, the very first toggle will say “All ‘your app name’ notifications”. If you turn off the toggle on the right of this option. You will block out all notifications from the app. Check out the image below. We don’t recommend you do this for any communication-based app, or one that can send you some important notifications. Also note that you will still be able to use the app completely when you open it. How to block notifications from an app selectively Sometimes, you may only want to block selective notifications from an app. This could be useful for, say, payment-related apps, where you may want to be notified about transactions, but not about loan offers. Here’s how to do that. Step 1: Long press on a notification from the app that you want to selectively block out. You will see the small gear-shaped settings icon on the top left. Click on it. Step 2: This will take you to the notification settings page for that particular app. Below the ‘All notifications’ toggle you will see a range of categories that the app sends you notifications for. This will differ from app to app. For instance, if I am not interested in the ‘Remind Me’ and ‘Flipkart Community’ notifications from Flipkart, but I do want notifications on offers, I can simply turn off the toggles I don’t want and keep the ones I want left on. Check out the image below. That is it. You have now controlled how an app can send you notifications. Repeat this for all apps that are cluttering your notification panel and you will soon have a more productive notification experience where you only see what you want to see.
