Show HN: DoNotNotify – Log and intelligently block notifications on Android

[awaaz]

Why - I got sick of apps abusing notifications on my Android phone. While the OS does give you the ability to switch off notifications based on channels, most apps either don't use it or abuse it intentionally. In my case, I live in a gated society that uses an app called MyGate to allow visitors, and the app intentionally pushes ads through the same channels since you cannot block them.

What - DoNotNotify is an app that logs all incoming notifications, and displays them grouped by app. It also captures the action behind the notification, which can be triggered from the app itself. From this log, you can create rules to whitelist/blacklist notifications from apps depending on their notification content. These filters can even be regex expressions, which allows for more complicated use-cases. The app ships with some pre-defined rules for popular apps like Facebook, Amazon, Instagram, Netflix, TikTok, Reddit etc.

Where - The website is at https://donotnotify.com/.

Would also like to call out that the app runs purely on your device, never communicates with anything on the Internet, and only requires notifications access to work. It is completely free, and there is no advertising or hidden gotchas.

[Draiken]

I would love to use this, but I don't want to allow a third party app with closed source to read all my notifications. This can read OTP passwords, full messages, etc. so it must be open source for me to consider it.

I would donate/pay for this if it was open source on F-Droid.

Kudos to you for building it. I put off building this exact same application so many times it's not even funny. Too bad I'm too lazy to maintain something like this.

[gruez]

>I would love to use this, but I don't want to allow a third party app with closed source to read all my notifications. This can read OTP passwords, full messages, etc. so it must be open source for me to consider it.

The app lacks the INTERNET permission so it can't really exfiltrate data even if it wanted to.

[awaaz]

Fair enough, you only have my word on it (that it doesn't send any data to the Internet). But you do have my word :)

Another person requested that the app be open-sourced as well. I will look into that.

[JazCE]

It's something i've also vaguely thought about building myself, because god damn uber, how many times do you need to send me an advert for uber one? just tell me when my car is here.

so congrats to the author of this. I do agree that I'd prefer it open sourced too, it feels a bit risky it having access to all your notifications.

[psittacus]

It took me a moment to find, but Alertly claims to do something similar while being open-source. Last commit was made two years ago though.

https://f-droid.org/packages/com.example.notificationalerter

https://github.com/lightningcpu/Alertly

[princevegeta89]

If you're feeling skeptical and just want to be sure, you can use this NetGuard https://github.com/M66B/NetGuard to block internet access for any app.

[ranger_danger]

If you're that paranoid, you might also consider not using F-Droid:

https://www.privacyguides.org/en/android/obtaining-apps/#f-d...

https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/15490-f-droid-or-obtainium

[artk42]

Absolutely! It is a sovereignty software effectively, it could be OSS only, otherwise treated as "soon to turn into bloatware cash-cow to death". There is no other way to gain trust, but staying closed source is a way to confirm distrust. If dev scared about monetization that much, that's a pre-bloatware effectively.

[cocoto]

I’m now an iOS user but the problem is actually the same here : apps not respecting communication channels to push ads (mostly to their own app or service). I usually fully block notifications from most apps but for some apps the notifications are really convenient (carpooling, transport or delivery app). Yes I want to know if the train I booked is delayed. No I don’t want to be notified that you are now partnering with another transport company and that you are sharing 5% off coupons to try it… I systematically give a 1 star review explaining the issue and mail the devs if possible. I even think that Apple Store and Play Store ToSs are against this practice but they are not enforcing it sadly…

[johnmaguire]

Worse even because iOS doesn't offer notification groups/channels like Android does (ignoring the fact that market leaders like Uber, DoorDash, etc. eschew them in favor of "General" channels they can pump both delivery/ride info and ads through.)

IMO this needs to be an app guideline enforced by the iOS App Store and Play Store. I remember back in the day, iOS used to be known for having less spammy notifications.

[benterix]

I chose the hard way and disabled them anyway. If I want to know if a train is delayed, I check. If I wait for a driver, I check. Actually the latter is better as I'm not surprised by the guy arriving but can synchronize well. And frankly, I don't complain.

And every evening or so I sit down on my computer and check WhatsApp notifications on web.whatsapp.com to catch up with what's going on in groups people added me to. I find this quite good for my well-being.

[Brajeshwar]

Here is a fun story. Just like you, I too live in a “gated community”, and we also default to MyGate. We have a founders group in there, and the things with MyGate and its irritations would sometimes come up. We all would wink and go about our days. The founder of MyGate is in the group and is one of the neighbors. We sometimes teased that we would just camp out outside his home, asking him to fix these excessive notification issues and bugs, and to add/edit features. ;-)

Another founder friend lives in a different mid-sized community and was using MyGate. He got pissed not just at the ads but at the massive data gathering—contacts, camera, flashlight, and everything. He ended up creating https://dobermanapp.com

[OkGoDoIt]

That doberman site feels kind of sketchy. It doesn’t say anything about the hardware required or how someone would integrate this. Also it says it’s free but then one of the five top level pages is the SLA which says it doesn’t apply to free plans. I really don’t understand if this is just a random landing page that someone created to gauge interest or what.

[userbinator]

If I were in that situation and had no other choice I'd just RE the app and figure out what API calls it makes, and reimplement it myself.

[ved_a]

Ah we live in the same ‘gated’ community and probably are neighbours then ?

[reedf1]

My solution to this problem was to have my phone permanently on silent. The logic being - there was nothing so urgent 25 years ago that couldn't be solved by an asynchronous answering machine message checked once a day; why do I need moment to moment updates now.

Nowadays I'd probably use a tool like yours. My partner is going through legitimate withdrawal symptoms after two years of short-form content addiction. Turning off all notifications was one of the first things I did for them.

[shrubby]

I'm occasionally keeping my data turned off and am telling everyone "if urgent call me".

[bambax]

I turn off notifications for every app except calls and messages; it's fine because almost no-one ever calls or texts anymore (Whatsapp messages can wait until I look at them).

Turning the phone on silent isn't really a solution since it still pollutes the screen (and the history) with useless notifications.

[nottorp]

Deny all notifications when installing a new app. Enable them only if you absolutely need them.

Gate access isn't absolutely need, your visitors can call you. Or if you order food you can check status on the food app.

[blauditore]

Even when checking once a day, it's still worse with spam notifications. It's like getting 20 spam phone calls on your answering machine between the real ones.

[modeless]

Android (at least on Pixel) recently added a notification spam detection system, under the name "Notification Organizer". Unfortunately they don't let you block the spam, only deprioritize it. So it won't make noise, but you still have to manually dismiss it from the notification drawer. The PMs almost had the right idea...

Luckily on Android you can use Tasker and the AutoNotification plugin to block specific notifications that bug you. And I guess this app is now another alternative. I don't know how iOS people live without the ability to do this. My wife, who uses iOS, is constantly complaining about annoying notifications and there's nothing I can do to help her.

[einsteinx2]

> I don't know how iOS people live without the ability to do this. My wife, who uses iOS, is constantly complaining about annoying notifications and there's nothing I can do to help her.

I’m on iOS and as soon as an app sends me a spammy notification I just go into settings and turn off notifications for it. Though honestly most of the time I just don’t allow notifications in the first place.

[lukan]

The mygate app you have to use made me curious.

They proudly advertise:

"Capture the attention of India’s most sought-after communities"

https://mygate.com/ad-platform/"

Faszinating, literal vendor lock in. I know that moving places suck (I am just doing it), but this would be unacceptable for me.

[busymom0]

They also advertise:

> 47% DAU:MAU

> Build strong brand recall with high frequency on our daily-use app

Spamming notifications is how they are getting these high frequency users.

[Abishek_Muthian]

Congratulations on the launch OP.

I'm currently using BuzzKill[1] for managing notifications on android. It's so good (and beautiful) that even though I use iPhone as primary device, I receive most of my notifications on android and relay it to my iPhone using a Termux script[2] after putting it through BuzzKill.

I understand that your USP is logging which BuzzKill also provides with numerous actions and Tasker integration on top of it.

It's great that DoNotNotify is free, but if any android app deserves to be paid for its BuzzKill. Perhaps being open-source could be a better differentiator for DoNotNotify?

[1] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.samruston....

[2] https://github.com/abishekmuthian/apple-watch-with-android/t...

[benrutter]

This looks nice! I had no idea you could actually control notifications as an app.

One thing I've always wanted is the ability to "group" notifications.

Apps like WhatsApp can be really bad for pinging lots of times within a minute for individual messages. I really don't need my phone to buzz more than once every five minutes, and wish I could set rules like "don't buzz for x minutes after a notification".

[emilburzo]

Since Android 15, Google Pixel phones have a "notification cooldown" that sort of fixes this. Hopefully it makes it's way to all Android phones at some point.

https://www.androidauthority.com/android-15-notification-coo...

[awaaz]

That's a great suggestion. Perhaps in the next version!

[tracker1]

That would be nice.. or at least, don't buzz unless it's after I've activated and interacted with the phone/app in question.

[nottorp]

You mean your whatsapp isn't muted, and the mute muted again just in case?

[Zigurd]

The play store should reject apps that use audible notifications other than those controlled by Android platform notification permissions. Making a user dig through an obscure multiple layer settings jungle to track down and kill annoying notifications is a dark pattern and deserves de-platforming. I'm looking at you, Facebook.

[drnick1]

The Facebook app is malware. Remove it from your system and use better ways to communicate with people, e.g. Signal.

[kevin_thibedeau]

You long press the notification and block the app. Pretty straightforward.

[princevegeta89]

I use an app called BuzzKill on Android for achieving this and many more things. I usually keep my notification bar at an absolute minimum when it comes to the number of notifications, but this app allows me to set rules for notifications based on their content. By default, all apps that I use have notifications turned off by default and they also get into deep sleep mode. So I'm sure they are not even running after a while. Only apps like WhatsApp, Slack, Signal can receive notifications. And by using the rules on Buzzkill, I am also able to automatically discard marketing notifications and useless notifications from these apps as well.

For an app like Google Maps though, I completely turned off notifications because there's really no need for me to have them. If you go into the notification settings through the Google Maps app, it's a big shitshow because it has some 40 categories that you will have to manually manage and I'm sure this was designed for the very purpose of letting users become tired after looking at them and then leave things as is.

Similarly, I do think the vast majority of the apps that we use don't need to send us any notifications at all. Thanks to Android for adding this feature to block all notifications from apps some four years ago, I guess.

[BeetleB]

I second Buzzkill. My comment was going to be "What does this do that Buzzkill doesn't?"

[sega_sai]

I have an Android phone and it's constantly set to 'Do not disturb'. I only have a couple of people that are exempt (you can do that in the settings). Because of this I am not too fussed about even occasional extra notification, because I deal with all of them when I have time.

[awaaz]

Personally it just grates me when my notifications stack up (even if I wasn't disturbed when the notifications came in). My philosophy is - I should be able to control what I see, hence this app.

[rockskon]

However bad you think you have it with phone notifications - it is ten-times worse for the elderly.

The enormity of the garbage spam they get from phone app notifications and text messages is breathtaking.

[hobofan]

This is great! Looking forward to using it. Especially the rule-based filtering function, as my biggest sore spot with notifications are the few handful of highly functional apps that stuff marketing notifications into notification groups that are not marked for marketing.

[Zak]

My approach to this problem is to not install apps that could be websites, and to remove apps that send me useless notifications. Some apps use notification categories, which gives the user some control.

A feature that would make this app useful to me is a notification digest as a third option in addition to allow and deny. The digest would hold certain notifications and show them to me all at once on a schedule I set.

For a concrete use case, I have low-priority group chats and high-priority direct messages in the same messaging app. I want the direct messages to interrupt me at any time, and I want to be told I have unread group chats a couple times a day without having to poll them manually.

[Pxtl]

Imho there are 3 separate classes of notifications

1) Ads - these should not exist, really, or at worst should be flagged in the app store as an anti-feature isolateable from other notifications.

2) "Recommendations" - that is, stuff you didn't subscribe to but are things the app offers that they "think you would like". These are defensible but should never ever be mixed with...

3) Stuff I actually explicitly subscribed to.

Breaking these rules should be rejection from the app store. Especially now that Google is legally required to allow 3rd-party app stores, they have much greater grounds to properly curate the Play Store. Let the filth live on 3rd-party stores.

[cco]

I'm kinda surprised to hear people having this problem on Android. I've found Android's notification management to be superb and, as others have said, with a one strike rule, this has been a non-issue for me.

> I live in a gated society that uses an app called MyGate to allow visitors, and the app intentionally pushes ads through the same channels since you cannot block them.

This strikes me as against the Play Store policy, potentially Notifications VX-S1, "Notifications are not used for cross-promotion or advertising another product, as this is strictly prohibited by the Play Store."

Worth a try to report them.

[CosmicShadow]

Facebook Messenger constantly tells you shit like "Hey, it's been 1 minute since someone messaged you, you better check it out!", Uber Eats is constantly telling me about meal deals even directly after I just ordered food on Uber Eats, and now it's giving me Uber ads implying the only thing stopping me from going out is that I haven't ordered an Uber, despite my history of only using it once a year when out of country and that I JUST ORDERED FOOD TO MY HOUSE!

You can't turn these off without never getting FB Messenger messages or notices of if your food has arrived because no one knows how to ring a fucking doorbell anymore even if the note specifically says to :/

[aydin212]

Love the on-device approach. The fact that it never phones home is a huge differentiator — most "utility" apps these days are just data collection with a feature attached. The regex filtering is clever. Have you thought about adding ML-based classification for notifications that are harder to catch with patterns? Something lightweight like a small on-device model could detect promotional vs. transactional notifications without needing manual rules. Also curious about battery impact — how often does it process the notification stream?

[awaaz]

> Have you thought about adding ML-based classification for notifications that are harder to catch with patterns?

Honestly that's a little out my league. The idea did occur to me, but I'm discouraged by the amount of compute required for most ML.

> Also curious about battery impact — how often does it process the notification stream?

The OS sends any new notification to the app (it is a push based approach) automatically. On my own phone, this app currently shows at the bottom of the list in battery usage (<1%).

[thecosmicfrog]

Looks interesting. Good work. Do you have plans to open source the code?

[bpavuk]

there is a very similar app with much bigger history and (obviously) greater reputation: BuzzKill. [0] it's paid, available on Google Play, has tons of features and then some.

also, I bet that Android platform forbids you from requesting the internet permission if you use some "dangerous" permissions, e.g. reading notifications.

EDIT: added link.

[0]: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.samruston....

[mattbee]

I've been happy with the solution of switching off notifications from apps that interrupt me with promotions - one strike and they're out.

The remaining notifications are _still_ frequent enough that no single app can expect to get my attention with a single buzz.

It's not like apps don't upsell to when I _open_ them and have to swipe away ads before I can use them. So why give them another channel?

25-years ago me is going to roll his eyes so hard, but you know where I don't mind slightly-targeted ads? My email & my doormat. Send me a catalogue, I love a catalogue.

[awaaz]

> I've been happy with the solution of switching off notifications from apps that interrupt me with promotions - one strike and they're out.

I have exactly the same policy. But in my case I am forced to keep notifications enabled from apps like MyGate (since nobody would be able to visit me without it) and I have no say in the matter - my gated society uses it and my only way out is to pay for the app itself.

[Willamin]

I also do my best to stick to a "one strike and they're out" personal policy.

But I also have apps that push marketing through notifications _and_ are urgent on a reoccurring basis (usually delivery or rideshare apps). For those, I'd love if there was a system notification setting (per app) for "allow notifications from this all for the next X hours" _and_ a simple UX to make that happen.

[bityard]

I guess I'm surprised that Android would allow one app to read/manage/block notifications from all other apps. I mean, I'm happy to have that kind of control over my phone, but it also seems like it could be viewed as a giant security hole? (Which would be a bit ironic given that Google is actively stamping out the ability for users to install apps that come from outside their walled garden.)

[awaaz]

The app requires a very specific permission for this, which it asks for on first launch. It's not even just a popup on which you can tap "Ok" - Android will take you to a special screen from where you need to manually switch on the notifications access for it to work.

[Mattwmaster58]

A couple years back I was looking for this sort of solution and ended up paying money to buy FilterBox which I've found to be good.

There are certain apps that I would love to be able to uninstall but have to keep for one reason or another, so I really appreciate apps like these which prevent attention-stealing notifications from making it through :)

[tamara_olive]

The wild part about all these notification-firewall concepts is that we keep re‑creating the same tool in closed source. Why not ship it as open source, charge for the hosted rulesets or ML models, and let people audit the code they’re literally piping every OTP and DM through? “Trust us, we don’t phone home” isn’t a strategy anymore when GrapheneOS, NetGuard, and even Pixel’s Data Saver already cover 80% of the use cases. The only reason I can see for keeping it closed is that the real business model is eventually selling the telemetry back to the very advertisers it claims to block. Am I missing an actually compelling reason not to open it up?

[dmitrygr]

This problem was supposed to be solved by app stores filtering these apps out. Sadly this does not work 100%. Some apps do this but are too-big-to-ban-from-the-appstore and others point to the first group and scream about selective enforcement. Thank you for providing this extra layer of protection!

[metalman]

Having never had a google account or used the "play" store, but having only used android phones(so far) I would try this from fdroid, etc. I have a workarounds that dissables all notifications except for pm's, the trickiest ones bieng for the varios google (dis)services. The other main workaround is to use webpage sign ins rather than apps through an oddball browser that breaks anything........hmmmm, too agressive, which luckily comes in another flavor that I have set up for banking, and certain other sign ins. But what I would realy realy like a cache cleaner that would wipe EVERYTHING , or better yet a detailed list of all running services and cached data AND bieng able to see the network. could be called WTFIGO, or FIGO for short

[pkulak]

Wow, I had no idea Android allowed a third party app to take over absolute control of all notifications. I assume you have to allow it somehow? It’s actually very cool that this is possible. Apple would never even consider allowing this.

[awaaz]

Yes, it requires a special permission, which the app asks for when it is first launched. Thankfully no other permissions are required.

[0xbadcafebee]

The Before Launcher for Android has a notification filter as well, and is a great simple launcher. It doesn't let you create rules, but you can enable/disable each app's notification, choose what kind of notification it gives, and you can enable/disable categories of notifications (call, navigation, event, alarm, progress, system, car_emergency, stopwatch, missed_call, reminder). You swipe right on the launcher and it shows you the pending notifications.

[tracker1]

Nice to see something like this... I've gotten to where I simply have most app notifications disabled altogether. Pretty much only phone calls and text messages get through, and my text message notification sound is pretty subtle at that.

If I go a few days without going into a given social media app to see the notifications in the app, so be it. For that matter, I'm relatively selective about the apps I even install in the first place.

[blauditore]

This has been a huge pet peeve of mine. I generally leave bad Play store reviews with a note, because that's usually the only thing they care about.

[tangoalpha]

I used to use Spren app. It later disappeared. I still use an old apk that I preserved. Works great! This app looks great. Will try!

[jFriedensreich]

As others pointed out: This >needs< to be open source, no way i touch another abandonware/ adware android project.

[darkstar999]

A little dramatic? You can stop using it if it becomes something you don't like.

[saeedesmaili]

I will try it to see if I can finally block the marketing notifications of my banks (!!!) app, traderepublic. I don't want to block all the notifications from this app, but it sends everything in one single channel, so it's not possible to only block marketing ones.

[albert_e]

Notification "channels" -- what a wild west

Some apps use just one channel and use it to send both really important stuff (like fraud alerts on your credit card) as well as ads so you cannot turn them off even if you wanted to.

Other apps create 4 new channels a week so you cannot turn them off even if you wanted to.

[stonecharioteer]

This is really great. I chuckled seeing MyGate. I hate that app. My society uses it and I'd need this exactly for it. I hate that Android doesn't force devs to use the right notification category. Apps need to be penalized for not adhering to that.

[drnick1]

If you really need an app, e.g. for work, put in a separate user profile (sorry iOS users, your phone is gimped).

[tisdadd]

I agree, this is an excellent idea and I am excited to try it.

[awaaz]

You're welcome, friend!

[elias1233]

I recently played around with a similar idea, but with the added feature that notifications would be sent together in a single notification from the app at scheduled times, optionally grouped by app

[ChrisbyMe]

yes! I looked into implementing adblock on the iPhone notification tray and it didn't look like it was possible. Glad someone is working on it for android.

Apps shouldn't be allowed to send notifications for Ads! I give any app on my phone one chance to be annoying and then turn them off.

This feels like something where we should be able to use an on device classifier or even LLM to bucket notifications, similar to a spam inbox.

Even better if they can pull any potential coupons out for use later without flavor text from the notification itself.

[naimurhasanrwd]

Does the app has any country wise template rule collections? I would love to have the feature but not willing to write rule 100 rules for 30 apps by my own.

[awaaz]

It does have rules for about 25 common apps already built in. I had considered making a feature to 'share' rules with other users of the app, but that would've required Internet access. And as you can see from the comments on this thread, nobody wants an app like this to send data :(

[Gabrys1]

LLM would help with this immensely, if only it was allowed (not sure how though... make the ruleset available as a single text field for export/import, maybe?)

[Multrex]

Tried with Cloudflare's 1.1.1.1 to hide the VPN and DNS notification from Android System notification service but it does not work.

[awaaz]

Can you share a screenshot of the notification, and the rule that you created for it at [e-mail] please?

Also, do note that if it is a persistent notification[1] then the Android OS does not allow it to be dismissed. In such a case, you will see the notification in the blocked history with a warning icon next to it.

[1] https://developer.android.com/develop/ui/views/notifications...

[drewg123]

Is there anything like this for iOS? Or is something like this impossible for a 3rd party to do on iOS?

[awaaz]

iOS doesn't give developers access to other apps' notifications, AFAIK. I'm not an iOS developer though - maybe someone with more knowledge can chime in.

[atmanactive]

This desperately needs export/import functionality.

[atmanactive]

Just landed! Kudos dev(s)!

[weli]

For samsung users I think good lock can do something similar.

[dorianmariecom]

ad block for android notifications (maybe for ios notifications too?)

[oezi]

I am surprised that nobody seems to have the opposite problem: Modern Android just no longer delivers notifications in realtime but bunches them and delays them to a degree that you can't rely on them anymore for synchronous communication. Whatsapp and Gmail messages often trigger notifications up to 15 minutes after being received for me. Infuriating.

[bgbntty2]

With apps like Signal, installed via apk, without going through Google on a de-Googled phone, I receive notifications in real time. What's the point of having all notifications go through Google, except to save some battery life and data?

Also, can Google read push notifications going through FCM?

[myworkaccount2]

when will it be available through fdroid?

[throw-12-16]

this isn't a native feature?

[cjbarber]

It would be neat to be able to do LLM filtered notifications. Perhaps with a local LLM for users that prefer.

I hope that Apple does a better job of this too! I don't want Uber's ad notifications, but I do want their notifications about my vehicle status.