tl;dr: Notification channels, which were introduced with Android 8, are now disabled by default and one has now to enable them manually (screenshots below by Android Police):
Notification channels are great when an app actually uses them (properly). Of late I’ve been seeing many apps sending spam thru the main channel, or not describing/using channels appropriately, all of which makes them kinda useless.
My folks live overseas and they often miss my chat messages because it gets lost in a sea of junk notifications. When I visited them last time, I tried to use notification channels to filter some of it out, but it was useless - there was basically no way to just filter out the junk notifications (without disabling notifications completely) for most of the apps they were using.
What we really need is a generic notification filter, where I can define my own text/regex filters, or maybe even employ some bayesian-style spam filter. Heck, I’d say Google should add a “mark as spam” option to one of the notification options, and if an app gets enough of these, the devs should get a warning or delisted from the Play Store.
It’s time for a notification spam folder.
They use them improperly on purpose. Google is an ad company so don’t expect them to help you reign in ads. We live in an attention economy and these companies want to take that from you and monetize it.
Every modern service has shit all over notifications, so I just have the vast majority of them disabled entirely. I used to spend hours setting up notifications to get a curated feed of what’s important. And it used to be an impulse for me to get “inbox zero” when I saw notifications and clear them all out. Now I don’t even look at them.
I put an auto-responder on some of my “chat” services because even those are just full of spam and ads now.
Of late I’ve been seeing many apps sending spam thru the main channel, or not describing/using channels appropriately
Those are the apps I uninstall. We live in a time where there are a billion apps. There are decent alternatives to anything and everything.
What we really need is a generic notification filter, where I can define my own text/regex filters, or maybe even employ some bayesian-style spam filter.
No, that’s probably the opposite of what we need. You realize that is far too complicated for 99% of users, right? Your text matched will constantly need to be updated and maintained. Sounds like a nightmare.
I’d wager money that Google announces at I/0 they are cracking down on spam notifications with on device Gen AI.
There are decent alternatives to anything and everything.
Not for most of the apps that my folks use. For instance, there’s this local grocery shopping app they use for groceries - the service is actually so good that there’s nothing really competitive in that space. Another one is an app for a TV channel which has the shows they watch, the app is needed for some interactive features. And so on. All of these apps spam notifications, with no option to filter them out without turning off the notifications completely.
No, that’s probably the opposite of what we need. You realize that is far too complicated for 99% of users, right?
Sure, but so are notification channels - how many normal users even know it’s a thing?
Your text matched will constantly need to be updated and maintained. Sounds like a nightmare.
Not really. From what I’ve observed, lot of these notifications follow the same pattern eg “X% DISCOUNT” “Something something DEAL” etc. Should be fairly easy to use a simple text filter, regex for the advanced users.
In any case, I still think having at least a Bayesian-style spam filter, or even an AI-backed one, would be a good thing. And having Google penalize spammers somehow.
One-third of that page: Samsung is being really annoying!
The other two-thirds of that page: advertising for Samsung
Thia sucks, I have an S23 and I’m up to date with patches, but I don’t see this option.
Edit: Just realized that I’m only on OneUI 6.0.
You guys are getting OneUI 6? I’m still in 5.1.1.
Z Flip 4 btw
