Wednesday 17 September 2014

How to turn off notifications for individual android apps?

Background

Notifications form a very important and integral part of Android operating System. They are used to notify user of various actions/updates. A very apt use case is our native email that we configure. Whenever we get a new Email or have a meeting in the calendar scheduled we should get a notification for the same which is what exactly happens. Developers of Android Apps code their app in such a way. 

But here's the problem. We as an end user do not wish to see all notification. For me I am a programmer as well as gamer. I like to try out new Apps including games. Recent ones that I tried include Clash of ClansBoom Beach and Hay Day  But I hate those gaming notifications that pop up. You are in office you get a notification alert. You expect it to be an important mail and it in-fact is some unwanted notification like your life/strength is full again . God.. I hate that moment!



Some developers provide support to disable notifications from the app itself but not all. For example candy crush game provides option to disable notifications - 



Solution


From Android Jelly Bean (4.1) there is support in OS itself for disabling app notification. You can disable any app notification as follows - 

  1. Under each application info screen there is now a checkbox for "show notifications" (assuming the app sends notifications).
  2. Uncheck that and no more notifications from that app should appear in your notification bar.

  3. When you get a notification you don’t want, pull down the notification bar, and hold down the notification until a box pops up that says “App info.” Tap that box. You will see the activity(screen) same as screenshot in step1.



     
Note :  Most apps, especially games, keep updating. When they update they turn the notifications on again. So you may have to repeat this process on each game update.

I have tested with my apps and it seems to work fine. Do share your experiences with unwanted notifications and if you tried any other method (other than rating it 1 star and uninstalling it :) ).

In older versions of Android than Jelly bean you are really at the mercy of programmer hoping that he/she has provided notification option in the settings.
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