If left unchecked, our smartphones can become a constant distraction, buzzing throughout the day to the point where it's difficult to do anything else between reading and responding to messages and scrolling through our feeds. Are you participating in too many group chats? Me too.
There's hope: Taking a few minutes to browse the notification settings on your Android phone can make a big difference in which apps can ping you, and under what conditions. Notification management on Android has slowly improved over the years, and now you get a really nice level of granular control.
Android is Android, and there are differences between phones, so you may need to adjust the following instructions slightly. They're written to work with Google Pixel phones running Android 14 or later, and Samsung Galaxy phones running Android 14 and OneUI 6.1 or later.
App reminder
From Settings, go to Notifications, then App Notifications , then tap an app: You'll see a toggle that lets you turn all notifications for that app on or off, so you You can quickly mute apps you don't want to hear coming from - you'll need to actually open the app to see the new feature.
If you're using a Pixel phone, you'll see a list of notification channels (or types): for the Clock app, for example, they include alarms, timers, and stopwatch alarms. Tap any channel to turn a specific notification on or off, or toggle it between default (uses your phone's current alert settings) or silent (notifications will appear on the screen but won't trigger noise or vibration, regardless of the situation) . settings on your phone).
On Galaxy phones, you need to do a little extra work to see these channels. From the main notification screen, select Advanced settings and enable Manage notification categories per app . Then, when you select a specific app, you can access individual channels under Notification Categories .
Each individual app page lets you control whether its notifications trigger on-screen pop-ups as well as dots or badges on the app icon (in the app drawer and home screen). Sounds and vibrations can also be handled separately, and you'll also see lock screen options: App notifications can appear in full on the lock screen, not previewed (in case someone else is viewing your phone), or not displayed at all Appear.
Return to the main notification screen to find more options, although the options differ slightly between Pixel phones and Galaxy phones. You can set certain conversations in your messaging app to be a higher priority so that they appear at the top of your chat and notification lists, and control whether notifications can appear as floating bubbles on top of other apps. You can also enable or disable notification snooze, and view your notification history (handy if you miss a reminder).
To set default sound and vibration settings for notifications, go to Sounds & Vibration (Pixel) or Sounds & Vibration (Galaxy) from Settings. Note that apps can have their own individual notification sounds if desired, which you can set by returning to the notification channels we looked at earlier, but vibration mode cannot be configured on an app-by-app basis.
Set do not disturb
You don't necessarily want to have the same notification settings applied throughout the day and night, which is where Do Not Disturb comes in. You can access it from Notifications in Settings and you'll see that you can turn on the mode before selecting Do Not Disturb. Turn it off manually, or automatically enable or disable it based on a schedule. Do Not Disturb hides and silences all incoming notifications unless you make any changes.
Multiple schedules can be set up, for example you might have one for evenings and another for weekday mornings. Each plan can have its own individual settings for what notifications you see and don't see, or it can follow a default Do Not Disturb configuration.
To set up this configuration, you have three main options. The first is People (Pixel) or Calls & Messages (Galaxy): here you can specify the contacts whose calls and text messages will override Do Not Disturb. Then there's Apps (Pixel) or App Notifications (Galaxy), where you can select specific apps for which Do Not Disturb applies.
The third option is Alerts and other interruptions (Pixel) or Alerts and sounds (Galaxy). Here, you can control whether alarms, games, and media apps (such as your favorite podcast player) can interrupt you when Do Not Disturb is enabled. Once you set these three options for Do Not Disturb, and for each schedule, your notifications should be fully customized to your needs.
Tap the Show option for Hide notifications (Pixel) or Hide notifications (Galaxy) and you can choose how alerts are hidden when Do Not Disturb is active - for example, you can choose to hide them completely so you don't know, Or they appear on the screen but don't make a sound or trigger a vibration.
The last option to keep in mind here is your phone’s silent mode option. On Pixel, tap the volume up or down button, then tap the icon above the slider; on Galaxy, swipe down from the top of the screen, then tap the top-left icon in Quick Settings. There are three options: enable sounds and vibrations, vibrate only, or mute sounds and vibrations, and they will apply to all your apps and notifications.
