Your instant Android annoyance eliminator

Oh, hello. Did you call for an exterminator — one that’s ready and raring to help swat away unwanted virtual pests of the Android variety?

Look, Android’s absolutely overflowing with options to take control of your notifications and make ’em work better for you. But no matter how many tools we’ve got at our disposal, it sometimes seems like annoying alerts still manage to make their way through and disrupt our days. (Don’tcha just love overly aggressive app noise?!)

Today, I want to introduce you to a smart new Android add-on I just recently encountered that can give you even more nuanced and easily achieved control. It’s a simple app that does one thing and one thing only. And Goog almighty, does it ever do it well.

So grab the nearest mask and metaphorical can of bug spray: It’s time to eliminate your Android notification annoyances once and for all.

[Don’t stop here: Come check out my free Android Intelligence newsletter for three new things to try in your inbox every Friday — and my Android Notification Power-Pack as a special welcome bonus!]

Android notification pest control

All right — first things first: You know about Android notification channels, right?

Notification channels are a feature that first came into Android way back in 2017’s Android 8 (Oreo) era, many Android versions ago. Certain device-makers (cough, cough, Samsung) for some reason still insist on disabling it by default and making you go out of your way to find and activate it — but it’s there and available, even so.

And once you figure out how to put those notification channels to use, you can opt in or out of specific types of notifications from an app — or just change how different types of alerts demand your attention — without having to flip any all-or-nothing alert-affecting switches. It’s an incredibly powerful way to stop certain categories of notifications from annoying you while still allowing the notifications you actually want to get through as they arrive.

That being said, notification channels aren’t always enough. Sometimes, apps don’t provide particularly nuanced channels for all the different types of alerts they create — and sometimes, you might need to narrow things down even further than a channel allows in order to effectively prevent certain notifications from buggin’ ya while leaving others from the same category alone.

That’s precisely where a new and completely free tool called DoNotNotify comes into play. DoNotNotify lets you look at your recent notification history and use it to create quick ‘n’ simple rules that block specific sorts of unwanted notifications from ever interrupting you again.

So, for instance:

You might tell DoNotNotify that you never want to see another notification that says “Upload finished” again.

Or maybe you’d ask it to keep alerts with the phrase “USB accessory connected” out of your hair henceforth.

Or perhaps you want to go a bit broader and put the kibosh on any notifications from (ahem) certain streaming apps that include words like “discount,” “sale,” “new release,” or “recommended.”

You get the idea. The sky’s the limit, and the best way to get going and figure out what sorts of notification nuisances you want to exterminate is simply to fire up DoNotNotify and see what it finds.

Time to start spraying

I’m tellin’ ya: There really isn’t much to this.

First, go grab DoNotNotify from the Play Store, if you haven’t already. It’s free, without any asterisks or limitations — just an optional mechanism to donate to its developer, if you’re ever so inspired — and it should run without issue on any reasonably recent device.

Then:

Open the app up and follow the prompt to grant it access to your system notifications.

An app like this obviously can’t function without being able to read and manage your notifications, so this level of access is perfectly sensible for the purpose. It’s also worth noting that the app doesn’t request any permissions whatsoever beyond that — including even access to the internet — so it couldn’t possibly share your data with anyone else, even if it wanted to. (Its developer is also emphatic about the fact that the app processes everything locally and offline, doesn’t collect or share any information, and doesn’t use any sort of tracking technology.)

Now, if you can muster up the patience, let the thing sit for a few hours or even a couple days so it can build up a decent history of the types of notifications you tend to receive. That’ll make it much easier to first figure out what rules you need and then to actually create ’em.

Once some time has passed — and a variety of different types of notifications have come in to your device — go back into DoNotNotify, and:

Tap the “History” tab at the top.

Look through your recent notifications, and find one that exemplifies a type of alert you want to avoid receiving in the future. (You may have to tap the name of an app in the list to expand it and see all the individuals notifications within.)

Tap the notification in question, then tap “Create Rule” and consider the fields you see.

DoNotNotify has just two main fields, for a notification’s title and its text.JR Raphael, Foundry

For most people and purposes, you’ll want to leave the buttons exactly as they are and just focus on the “Title Filter” and “Text Filter” fields.

“Title Filter” means any notification that has the listed word or words anywhere within its title — as in, the bolded text at its top — won’t ever be shown again.

“Text Filter,” as you may have guessed, means any notification with the listed word or words anywhere within its main contents, regardless of title, won’t be shown.

By default, DoNotNotify will simply pull over the complete title and text from the notification you used as a starting point. But you can — and may well want to — edit and adjust it to make it less narrow.

Making the “Title” and “Text” fields slightly less narrow can make a rule much more effective for the future.JR Raphael, Foundry

When you’ve got everything how you want it, tap “Save Rule” — and that’s it: The next time you receive a notification that meets the conditions you specified, it won’t beep, buzz, or appear in any way on your screen. DoNotNotify will instantly and automatically muffle it, and the only way you’ll know it even appeared is to look in DoNotNotify’s “Blocked” tab to see it.

Any blocked notifications are always visible within DoNotNotify’s “Blocked” tab.JR Raphael, Foundry

Now, fair warning: This will work exactly as described above — and it could create problems if you aren’t careful. If, for instance, you ask DoNotNotify to block all notifications from Google Messages that contain the word “the,” it will do it. And that means any notification you receive from Messages that has “the” anywhere within its text won’t notify you, and you’ll never notice its arrival.

It’s a powerful tool, in other words, and it’s up to you to wield that power wisely and think through the complete consequences of any rules you create. The good news, of course, is that it’s quite easy to revisit your rules, see exactly what messages DoNotNotify is blocking, and adjust or remove things as needed anytime.

Last but not least, one point worth making: If you’ve read my musings for long and you find yourself thinking, “Huh, this sounds an awful lot like the notification-enhancing app we were talking about last week” — by golly, Gertrude, you’re right.

That app, BuzzKill, is a much broader and more versatile notification filtering power-tool. While it can accomplish feats similar to what we’ve just gone over, if that’s all you’re looking to do, it’s arguably overkill. It also isn’t free, which — let’s be real — means a sizable chunk of Android-appreciating animals are never gonna experience it.

DoNotNotify is brilliant in its simplicity and in how easily accessible it makes this level of intelligent notification blocking, at absolutely no cost. Whether you use it by itself or in conjunction with BuzzKill — as well as with Android’s own native notification channel possibilities — it’s a resource well worth being aware of and keeping around as a part of your personal pest-zapping toolkit.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got some more webs to spray.

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