Some Android apps shove all of their notifications into one notification channel. For those cases, Buzzkill is honestly one of the best purchases I’ve ever made.
Programmatically-inclined people can also likely do that with the Automate or Tasker apps, since presumably Buzzkill does its thing via the same APIs. As a bonus, the apps can do many other things.
(I recommend Automate: Tasker looks more compact at first glance, but its idioms are quite wacky, whereas Automate is pretty much regular programming, just visually organized. Plus, Automate doesn’t require buying more apps for more functionality, and doesn’t have advertising code in it. However, Automate can’t do custom dialogs and onscreen buttons, so in practice I occasionally use Tasker too.)
That’s great in principle, but unless one lives a very particular life, being able to just outright reject an app or its notifications isn’t always an option, or offers too many tradeoffs to be reasonable. Particularly for people who are neurodivergent in ways that affect working memory.
Looking at my Buzzkill rules:
I’ve got a rule to immediately dismiss text messages from my kids’ school when the automated attendance system sends me the monthly reminder. They’re elementary students and I take them to school, I know about their attendance. But I can’t just block that number, because it’s also the number that their snow delay alerts come from.
I’ve got multiple rules to block all marketing notifications from the three different apps that my kids’ teachers use to send class notifications. Why three different apps? I don’t know, but you really can’t convince them to use anything different. If I block the notifications, I have to remember to check them manually or miss info since teachers don’t send home paper announcements to the parents anymore.
I have a rule to dismiss the marketing notifications from the app my city uses for its parking meters. I could turn off all notifications, but then I’d miss the expiration notices. Yes, I could set a timer. But having ADHD has cost me more money than just parking fines in the past. Yes, I could just use coins or cards, but I haven’t used cash for anything in years, and the card readers on the meters take such a long time.
My garage door opener, which I didn’t choose, has an app which has decided to send marketing notifications. This app’s entire purpose is to let me know when the garage door has been left open, so turning off notifications could leave me open to theft. Again, leaving the app entirely is a possibility, but I’m not the only person in my house; my kids or wife could open the garage door and forget to close it. And we all have ADHD.
My wife uses an app to send video messages, and she sends them to me, too. The app nags users to give access to contacts. Disabling notifications or deleting the app could have relational consequences.
I value being able to leave my desk while at work, but I need access to some Slack channels (though not all) in case I need to rush back and fix an outage or something. Being able to sculpt my notifications lets me get notifications from a subset of Slack channels on my phone while leaving them all on on my computer.
You get the picture. I’d love to be able to be more ruthless with app choices, but that would carry various consequences I’m not interested in dealing with.
True, but I will not tolerate apps that engage in that kind of shitty behavior. Makes me think that they are farming my data. Why else would something like a grocery list app give two shits about whether or not I used it.
Don’t know what os you’re on, but on Android at least, you can customize what type of notifications are allowed per app.
Some Android apps shove all of their notifications into one notification channel. For those cases, Buzzkill is honestly one of the best purchases I’ve ever made.
Programmatically-inclined people can also likely do that with the Automate or Tasker apps, since presumably Buzzkill does its thing via the same APIs. As a bonus, the apps can do many other things.
(I recommend Automate: Tasker looks more compact at first glance, but its idioms are quite wacky, whereas Automate is pretty much regular programming, just visually organized. Plus, Automate doesn’t require buying more apps for more functionality, and doesn’t have advertising code in it. However, Automate can’t do custom dialogs and onscreen buttons, so in practice I occasionally use Tasker too.)
Yeah, and those are the ones I won’t abide. And I certainly won’t be paying for an app just so my other apps behave.
That’s great in principle, but unless one lives a very particular life, being able to just outright reject an app or its notifications isn’t always an option, or offers too many tradeoffs to be reasonable. Particularly for people who are neurodivergent in ways that affect working memory.
Looking at my Buzzkill rules:
I’ve got a rule to immediately dismiss text messages from my kids’ school when the automated attendance system sends me the monthly reminder. They’re elementary students and I take them to school, I know about their attendance. But I can’t just block that number, because it’s also the number that their snow delay alerts come from.
I’ve got multiple rules to block all marketing notifications from the three different apps that my kids’ teachers use to send class notifications. Why three different apps? I don’t know, but you really can’t convince them to use anything different. If I block the notifications, I have to remember to check them manually or miss info since teachers don’t send home paper announcements to the parents anymore.
I have a rule to dismiss the marketing notifications from the app my city uses for its parking meters. I could turn off all notifications, but then I’d miss the expiration notices. Yes, I could set a timer. But having ADHD has cost me more money than just parking fines in the past. Yes, I could just use coins or cards, but I haven’t used cash for anything in years, and the card readers on the meters take such a long time.
My garage door opener, which I didn’t choose, has an app which has decided to send marketing notifications. This app’s entire purpose is to let me know when the garage door has been left open, so turning off notifications could leave me open to theft. Again, leaving the app entirely is a possibility, but I’m not the only person in my house; my kids or wife could open the garage door and forget to close it. And we all have ADHD.
My wife uses an app to send video messages, and she sends them to me, too. The app nags users to give access to contacts. Disabling notifications or deleting the app could have relational consequences.
I value being able to leave my desk while at work, but I need access to some Slack channels (though not all) in case I need to rush back and fix an outage or something. Being able to sculpt my notifications lets me get notifications from a subset of Slack channels on my phone while leaving them all on on my computer.
You get the picture. I’d love to be able to be more ruthless with app choices, but that would carry various consequences I’m not interested in dealing with.
I appreciate you writing this all out. Always good to learn new perspectives on other people’s lives.
Thanks for your response. I appreciate it.
True, but I will not tolerate apps that engage in that kind of shitty behavior. Makes me think that they are farming my data. Why else would something like a grocery list app give two shits about whether or not I used it.