[bradreaves2]

All the external noises are a big problem.

But the things that irritate me even more are the infernal modals and alerts on my computing devices. It is hard enough maintaining focus without having to spend an entire work session playing whack-a-mole at random intervals for a hundred different things that aren’t relevant. I never want to know that my scanner software has an update available.

I realized that at its core, this problem is caused by developers and product managers mistakenly believing that I care as much about their product as they do.

It would be nice if the gatekeepers had mechanisms that punished this behavior. Search engines should lower the rankings of every site with random modals. App stores could display a normalized metric of alert click through — “this app has an above average number of alerts that are ignored”.

[trinix912]

I've disabled the entire notification stack on macOS and Windows 10 with some tweaks and couldn't be happier. It's not like I'm going to miss out on anything of value as Slack, Discord, Mail will just indicate new messages with a dock/taskbar icon change.

But it's sure as hell annoying to have unsolicited popups randomly appearing ("Java update available! Apple Music now 50% off! GeForce Experience driver update! Windows Defender scan results! USB drive not ejected properly!..."). They're also often embarrassing when screen sharing.

[ziml77]

One thing that drives me up the wall on macOS is when an application demands attention and its dock icon starts bouncing... and doesn't stop. It happens over fullscreen stuff too.

The flashing icons in Windows are far less obtrusive, and I was just looking at the latest insider preview for 11 where they are making it so the icon will only flash a few times and then change the little "application is running" bar that sits under the app icon from white to red to indicate that it wanted your attention. Which sounds like an excellent way to handle it to me.

[gblargg]

Any app that pops up a notification when NOTHING EXTERNAL HAS HAPPENED has all its notifications turned off immediately and permanently. It's literally just deciding "hey, I'll bother the user about something pre-programmed right... now!" No.

[DanielHB]

It is easier to just completely disable all notifications for everything and manually enable as needed.

The only notifications I have on are direct messages on whatsapp (no group messages) and slack during work hours +-30min only.

[nonameiguess]

This is a bigger problem, not just of software developers, but all businesses thinking you care about them as much as they do, not seeming to understand that I've made purchases from tens of thousands of businesses over the course of three decades as an adult, with more to come, and no matter how much I might care in theory or principle about any one of them, there is no universe in which I can read daily, weekly, or even monthly e-mails, SMS messages, or pop-up notifications from all of them, because if I actually did that, my entire life would consist of nothing but filling out surveys. The cheeky little smiley emoji asking if they can take just five minutes of my time misses the point. Sure, I've got five minutes, but you're one of 30 businesses asking for that every day, and it's no longer "just a moment" when it adds up to two and a half hours across all of them.

[YetAnotherNick]

> developers and product managers mistakenly believing that I care as much about their product as they do

Isn't it opposite. They know you don't care and try to spam you to care or remember to use them. It is like an advertisement for self.

[vasco]

But do you want these cookies?