Setting up priorities on your phone can cut back on endless ringing and dinging.
I’m a news junkie, so I have apps from numerous news organizations. I love that I can get an update anytime I want, but what I don’t need is an audible sound every time a news organization publishes a story it thinks I should read. It’s rare for a news story to be so urgent that it needs to interrupt what I’m doing so I turned off notifications for all of those apps. I also turned off notifications from Gmail. I get a lot of emails and most of it can wait.
I do have some apps that I let notify me such as the one from my home security system, the ones that let me know if my space heaters have tipped over and the one that tells me if my air fryer is done with its cooking and the one that tells me if my car is ready for a software update.Both iOS and Android allow you to control individual notifications and set up a “do not disturb” time when all but certain notifications are silenced.
iOS and Android both allow you to turn notifications off for specific apps. By default, they’re usually on and usually notify you immediately if the app has something to say to you. I go through each app and turn them off unless it really is an app that I want to hear from in real time. In iOS, go to notifications, and scroll down to each app where it will say either “immediate,” “scheduled” or “off.” Click on the app and change it to how you want to be notified.
In recent versions of Android, go to the message, click on the 3 dots in the upper right corner, select Details, then select Notifications and then choose Priority, Default or Silent.Regardless of how you get specific notifications, there are certain times — mostly when you’re trying to sleep — when you don’t want any notifications except emergency calls from family or close friends.