what the fuck makes phone apps so
cocky as to send me notifications telling
me to use it. my grocery list app straight
up went "you havent made a list in a
while!" are you out of your fucking
mind. you are a program. why are you
speaking to me like youre my equal. i
could replace you with a pen and the back
of a receipt. idiot. i kill you now
I don't like those either. I like the tones the airpods use. A single beep has no intrinsic meaning. But the tone it uses for low battery is as intuitive as it can get. Also if you don't speak English the voice is just as useless as the tone. Especially if it's something like this.
That said my friend has a headset that announces "mic on" and "mic off" and we get far too much enjoyment out of mocking it saying my cock.
Many apps have "notification channels" (on android), to customize what notifications you get. You could choose to disable some notifications and keep others.
Any app that does shit like that immediately loses notification privileges. At the very least. If it's something that I don't need (thanks for reminding me, app), then I will just remove it.
I wish there was a more punitive option. Like, yeah, I disallowed notifications, but I also had a leaky gallon of liquid shit delivered to the CEO's home.
I had no idea people didn't do this! First notification I get from an app that isn't some form of messaging, straight to settings and turn off notifications.
People are getting notifications from news apps. Apart from actual World War Fuckin Three, what possible news story could be worth being disturbed by your phone for?!?
Well before the current Android version, you had to manually go into the settings of the app or your phone to disable them. Now you get this on first boot of the app:
This makes it a lot easier to reject them immediately
My phone hasn’t made a sound in years. It’s hard on silent and all notifications* go to my watch so it can tap my wrist quietly and politely.
_
*I say “all”, but it’s calls, messages, and reminders. General purpose apps aren’t allowed to talk to me.
This. I shut off all notifications from nearly all of my apps. Primary text app, phone app, and just a couple of others. I may temporarily allow them for a special purpose, but once that's over they all get silenced and I get to them when I get to them. I hate badge notifications, too. So, those are off for EVERYTHING. Grad school cemented that aversion.
Sometimes I put directions into Maps for a work thing and I have to be there before the location opens to the public and when I put the address in, before it will give me directions, the app says, "HEY, THE PLACE YOU'RE GOING MIGHT NOT BE OPEN, JUST THOUGHT YOU MIGHT WANT TO KNOW, STUPID ASSHOLE."
It's like when customer service call centers have 'longer than average wait times" because of "higher than average call volume" all of the fucking time.
If it happens all the time, it ain't higher than average.
Driving somewhere unknown, I need gas..."hey phone, take me to the nearest gas station" "okay, here's a tiny list of gas stations to choose from, please click the one you want"
And then it asks you if the gas station you want is one 8 hours away, instead of the one 3 minutes from your current location. This has happened to me many times.
I changed my first name in part because of this kind of nonsense. In the old days companies would refer to you as Mr. Surname, these days they're gross and chummy. Stay in your lane, we're not friends, you can use my paperwork name that I have no emotional connection to.
In the end, the proof is the developer's income. They seem to think it's worth it on average. Of course the average public contains a bunch of people who want to help out that nice Nigerian prince.
On top of that I'll sometimes put them entirely to sleep when I'm not using them. You get zero background privileges. I don't need you running in the background updating crap, when I only need to use you a few times a year.
Setting my phone to silent semi-permanently was a great decision. The sound of sensation of buzzing has become something I dread. Do not "ping" at me, machine. I will check for messages when I am bored, and no sooner!
Sad reality is that most things want to get you hooked and engaged in some way or another. Heck, even websites show you native device notifications now if you allow them, but I guess it's easier for an app to get you to agree to that, even if the app is just a website wrapper...
My tablet for some unknown reason sends me messages about my phone and cable bill being due. Like not an email notification but a separate notification out of nowhere and I can't figure out how to turn it off. I removed my cable app from the tablet thinking it'd do it, but it still happens. Like fuck off, I know I owe you an exorbitant amount of money.