After you've officially clocked out for the day, the last thing you want is work continuing to follow you home. And in the age of instant notifications, it can feel impossible to achieve a true work-life balance. However, by making the most of notification-management settings across your devices and apps, you can regain control. In this piece, we’ll explore simple ways to silence work distractions on both Android and iOS. Mute notifications from specific apps You don't need to dive into the settings of your phone to silence the noise from your work apps. Many of them have their own options to let you choose when they can and can't bother you. Below, we've listed how to minimise work-related notifications from each app after you've logged off for the day. WhatsApp: If you belong to a work WhatsApp group that gets flooded with messages every day, you can mute it by tapping and holding the chat and then selecting the bell icon at the top. Slack: Go to Slack on the web, click on your profile picture in the top right corner, and then pick Preferences. Under the Notifications tab, you can turn off notifications entirely. Or you can adjust the Allow notifications settings under Notification schedule to only get alerts during certain times of the day. You can even customise the times for different days. Microsoft Teams: Teams doesn't let you set working hours, but it does let you tweak which channels you receive notifications from and which devices you get them on. This means you can disable them on your phone while keeping them on your laptop, for instance. You can configure notifications from by tapping your profile picture at the top left, then selecting Notifications in the mobile app. Gmail: Gmail has a lot of options to fine-tune your notification settings. In the mobile app, tap the Menu button, then Settings. If you separate email accounts for work and personal, you can configure these notifications separately. You can also tell Gmail to only notify you about "high-priority" emails that you usually mark as important from its settings. You can also go to Settings > [email account] > Snooze chat notifications > Set a Do Not Disturb schedule and choose a specific time frame for when you want to hear from chat messages. Customising notifications on Android Devices Digging through settings for each app can be a bit cumbersome. So alternatively, you can configure notifications from your Android phone’s Settings app. You’ll find various ways to tailor your notification preferences per app. In the Settings menu under Apps, you can select individual apps and toggle notifications on or off completely. For apps like WhatsApp and Telegram, you can even fine-tune notifications to silence group chats but still receive alerts for one-on-one messages. Going a step further, Android also has a Do Not Disturb mode that lets you schedule specific times when you won't receive any notifications. To set this up, open your Settings, search for "Do not disturb," and choose the Schedule option. Once scheduled, Do Not Disturb will automatically activate during the set times. Managing interruptions on iPhones The iPhone's Focus feature allows you to automatically silence notifications from your work apps during non-work hours. You can also create location-based Focus modes - for example, to turn on when you are at home. You can access this feature by launching the Settings app, then tapping Focus. Select the Focus you want to schedule here, enable Smart Activation and then tap Back. Next, tap Add Schedule and choose times, locations, or app triggers that will activate your selected Focus.
