I do this too. I found an iPhone on the sidewalk a few months ago. It was locked but I could see notifications. I was absolutely aghast at what people allow to disturb them. This phone had pages and pages of notifications. Countless random apps alerting you of pointless new events occurring. Things going on sale, enticing you to buy things, friends posting things, etc. It was fascinating to see how other people live their lives.

That was the initial reason I disabled them, because I don't want personal messages coming through, or even who is sending them. Now it's a sanity reason. All must go.

The article starts out by saying that Android is much better at notification and that Apple is slowly catching up, however, what you describe is what I want on my Samsung S7 and can't have.

So maybe Apple isn't as bad at notifications as some would say ...

I just discovered that the unread message count badges were a Touchwiz only feature that went away with the Oreo update on my S7. The default Android Oreo way (which is now the only way) is awful; the count is just the number of undismissed notifications.

It amazes me that iOS has had this from day one, third party Android vendors including Samsung, Sony, and HTC have all created they own solutions, and yet Android made it to the letter "P" still without this feature.

I just upgraded to Oreo this week it remains to be seen just how many emails and messages I'm going to miss now that I can't see whether or not I have anything unread in these applications. It's frustrating.

The current belief is that constantly engaging with our smartphones has damaged our lives. We're unable to focus because we allow constant interruptions and we habitually check our phones instead of being present.

The current trend is to do away with these distractions and allow people to focus.

What you're arguing for is the exact opposite. You're asking for the distraction. Persistent reminders that you are neglecting a particular App.

You have it backwards. A badge on an icon is a passive indicator not a notification! When I look at my phone, I want to see if I have an unread message.

The Oreo model means I either have to have notifications (which are actual distractions) or I simply have no clue if something needs to be dealt with. For a device designed for communication, this is important. It's not a distraction, it's literally the reason I have the device.

While I like badge notification, they can be distracting. I sometimes find myself opening apps just to remove the badge icon.

Don't worry, next year it'll be introduced on Android.

I don't disable all of them but I tend to agree that the best approach to notifications is to disable pretty much everything that isn't relatively low volume and/or something you actually want/need to deal with or know about more or less immediately. Social media, news. etc. definitely does not qualify.

It would be nice if there was something more granular, show notifications from your girlfriend.

I often run in DND, with some of my contact list set to bypass DND and notifications off for nearly every app.

That combined with notifications set to repeat on messages (like old feature phones used to) means I'll get a few pings from people I'd like to hear from. Everything and everyone else is silence until I decide to unlock and look.

The only thing I miss on iPhone is a notification LED as even with repeat I occasionally miss a message or call from friends. Then again perhaps I don't: in all my years on Android, and paying for several LED apps, I never once got the simple notification behaviour I sought from an LED. Not once. Android always overwrote it with something else, or Google's preferred colour or different behaviour.

My old feature phones and early GSM mobiles managed to do LEDs sanely enough.

In messages/phone you can put people in a group that you can set to bypass Do Not Disturb which is almost the same thing as you're asking for. In other apps, I'm not sure how iOS would have the identity information to do what you ask.

Is there some magic to make that work? So far as I can tell, this is only honored for phone calls. I don’t get texts from my wife when my phone is in DND mode, and she is in my allowed group.

It's possible :-) that I'm wrong. I knew the feature existed for phone calls and I assumed that meant it worked for texts as well. But I haven't personally tried it. [ADDED: I could see the thinking being that if it's really urgent, someone will call and, if you're sleeping, a message notification won't reliably wake you up.]

I recently started taking a new approach. Say yes to any new app that requests notifications. If the app sends me annoying notifications, I delete the whole app.

That was my solution to having a bunch of apps on my phone that I don't use.

I’ve even disabled badges for most things, including anything social. The badges are too enticing.

Oh see, my solution to that was just removing those apps, and deleting my social accounts.

Are you marco.org ? Because Marco has explained something similar in the podcast.

Very likely they’re. Username seems to be in reference to Marco’s Overcast app.

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