Notifications should be opt-in
7 August 2025 · Written by Herman · No comments yet – be the first!
Sometimes, I find myself having strong opinions on stuff that arguably doesn’t matter. This is one of those cases.
I consider myself a perfectionist—I like to write neatly (including the use of em dashes, which people nowadays unfortunately correlate with the use of ChatGPT), I like to keep my stuff at home in consistent spots so I always know where to find my things, and I like to keep my phone notifications to a minimum. Smartphone distraction is a serious problem. A vibration or a chime takes you out of your focus even if just for a second. I consider some notifications pleasant enough to allow this, for instance friends trying to contact me in the evening. However, every once in a while, an app that I’ve had for a while “goes rogue” and sends a new type of notification with the sole purpose of prompting me to use their app again or purchase something. Quite literally spam in the most intrusive, personal way.
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How did this happen?
By default, if you install an application, your phone assumes1 you want the app and all that comes with it. In reality though, odds are you need to use only part of the app (e.g. banking, navigation), and that specific app is the best in the market, so you’re stuck with all other functionality that the app provides without ever using it. Their monopoly position makes it so that they can abuse notifications and directly influence millions of users with it.
Android has come a long way since its release2. Nowadays, apps can separate notifications by custom categories, and users can selectively disable these categories. However, certain apps still put all of their notification types—important and less important ones—under a single category, effectively removing this Android feature that aims to improve usability. Let’s be optimistic and assume this isn’t malicious intent. Still, the effect is clear: users can either enable all notifications or none of them. For an app that handles your parking timer, you now pretty much need to enable all notifications including the spammy ones. It doesn’t matter for how long you’ve been a loyal, paying customer.
Even apps that do implement this separation of notifications can still “go rogue”. At any point, an installed app can automatically update and add a new notification category. By default, this category will be turned on and thus will notify you.
1. Just to be 100% clear: your phone doesn’t actually “assume” anything, it’s just a figure of speech 🙃.
2. I presume this article applies just as well to iOS, though I haven’t used it enough to be certain.
What can we do?
I propose the following improvement of notification handling directed at Google’s development team behind Android. Unfortunately, we live in a reality where devices aren’t truly our own, in the sense that we cannot easily add features to our own devices3. The best we can do is provide feedback to the Big Tech manufacturers and hope they’ll listen. That, or remove apps and put your phone on Do Not Disturb, of course.
We could add a button for simple user feedback when long-pressing an incoming notification: if the notification category is too broad, and many users feel the same, (1) the app’s manufacturer could be notified (no pun intended) that users would like a more broad definition of notification categories, and (2) repeated “negative” feedback in this sense could penalize an app’s Play Store ranking. I presume an app’s median installation-to-removal timespan also affects its ranking, so it’s not too crazy to think that notification feedback could affect its ranking similarly. This way, you get more apps higher up in the ranking that provide good usability4.
When a user installs a new app, I’d love to see a pop-up to let the user select notification categories to opt-in to, similar to how apps are already explicitly asking for various device permissions like GPS and call logs. When the user clicks “next” without toggling any notification category, the default should be that the user will never be notified by your app. “But now my users aren’t getting any essential updates from my app, and my app’s reviews will tank!!”, I hear the app developers among you scream. Worry not: your app can check whether the user has enabled your essential categories, and you can let the user know that that notification is essential for the app to function as intended, just like how location permissions should already be disableable for a Maps app without letting the app crash. If you tell your users to “just enable everything”, in my opinion, your app deserves those reviews :-).
3. Although custom ROMs exist, this often leads to missing drivers or secure (banking) apps no longer being supported.
4. “Don’t people already write negative reviews when an app provides spammy notifications?” Maybe, but not surely. I haven’t. As personal as reviews are, it is rare to get a personal response from a developer.
Is this really the right solution?
I believe this default behaviour of notifcations being allowed, programmed into Android, is mostly done to make using your device simpler. I don’t think buttons for user feedback that directly affect e.g. an app’s ranking in the Store fits the design principles of either Apple or Android. The majority of smartphone users aren’t power users trying to get the most out of their device. People don’t want to answer a question every other day whether one of their installed apps is allowed to send a new kind of notification5. If you install an app, it makes sense that you would want to use the app’s functionality by default. However, I’d still argue that we can do better as a society. We’ve already witnessed a change in that more and more device permissions are becoming opt-in. The idea for notification categories to follow suit isn’t too far off. We should always aim to minimize unwanted distractions on our phones. We all have our part in this. If we could make manufacturers add subtle ways for users to provide feedback on this matter, and actually use this feedback in a way that directly loops back to the end users’ satisfaction, I’d say “why not?”.
5. I make a lot of assumptions in this section. Let me know if—more importantly, why—you disagree!