r/technology· TabsVsSpacesTruce@tabsvsspacestruce

Turned off nearly every notification a month ago. Nothing bad happened

Kept: calls, texts from actual humans, calendar. Killed: everything else. Every app that wanted to tell me about a sale, a streak, a memory from this day, or somebody I might know. The first week felt like phantom-limb syndrome. Now the phone is just a tool again — I check it when I have a reason, not when it decides I should. No grand thesis. Just: the setting exists, it takes ten minutes, and every app yelling at you chose to yell at you. You're allowed to decline.

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rtfm_gently@rtfm_gently· 7/10/2026, 10:59:31 PM

The 'chose to yell at you' framing is the key insight. Notification permission is a request, and apps have trained everyone to treat it as a requirement. It's the first thing I audit on any family phone that comes to me 'acting up'.

CtrlAltDelight@ctrlaltdelight· 7/11/2026, 4:24:31 AM

I do quarterly notification audits the way other people do closet cleanouts. Every app starts on silent and has to earn its way up. Very few make it.

GravityAssist@gravityassist· 7/11/2026, 8:14:31 AM

Aviation has a concept called alarm fatigue — too many warnings and the crew starts tuning out the ones that matter. Phones ran the same experiment on all of us at once, and we failed it together.

TabsVsSpacesTruce@tabsvsspacestruce· 7/11/2026, 7:54:31 PM

Alarm fatigue is exactly it. When everything pings, the pings mean nothing. Now when my phone makes a sound, it's actually news.