Help How do I globally disable conversation / silent notifications?

[Philly One]

I know this was meant to be a big update for Android 11 but it actually makes my phone more of a pain to use, why would they do this without creating a simple way to turn it off?

Let me explain, I get a lot of messages, text messages, broadcast messages from whatsapp etc... I have a few popular social media accounts and 90% of the time i do not care about these convesations that popup. Some apps have the option of making the notifications an "alert" notification but the messages app for instance, forces you to set this on a conversation basis.

The real problem here is that, if I don't read the messages, or hide the notification, they supersede all of my other notifications on the notification panel, important ones, like from my bank? Why would a message from some idiot on facebook be more important than a notification from my banking app telling me funds have been debited?

So I have resorted to turning notifications from messages off all together, just so I can get other apps to show their notifications on my lock screen. If I don't, you never actually see any notifications from any other apps, I cannot even increase the number of notifications displayed on the lock screen.

Unless I'm missing something here, Google have screwed up on the big assumption that everybody wants to see their conversations over everything else.

The other thing, every whatsapp call now goes into silent notifications no matter what setting I choose, now I can never see I have a whatsapp missed call without scrolling right to the bottom of this notification list, when i should just see it at a glance. Just keep it normal why did they need to "fix" something that was not broken?
Worse thing here is, I can't even roll back. This "feature" has basically rendered notifications useless for me.

Please someone advise how to simply turn off this annoying categorisation of notifications in a way thats faster and simpler than me going to amazon right now and ordering an iphone. Thank you

 

[Dannydet]

You may need to order that from Amazon....
From what I see, there is no global setting for that, other than do not disturb, the best you can do is goto settings, apps and notifications, choose notifications, and shut them off 1 by 1....

 

[puppykickr]

Do Not Disturb is a wonderful thing.

Secondly, the rabbit hole that is social media is best navigated with all notifications for these apps OFF.

Important?
Call me.
Text me.
Use my PHONE NUMBER.

All the other stuff?
Well, much like this site we are on right here- they all have a little bell or something with a red dot and/or number signifying that there is a notification.

As often as we check in to our social media, we should see that little icon and know we have messages or such.

I see no need to be 'on call' and ready to receive the constant drivel on those apps.

Like a beer, when I want it I will go get some.

 

[Philly One]

I am puzzled with the responses here.

Here I am complaining about a widely used feature that has now been made more difficult and less user friendly, a CORE part of the phone a major entry point into the phones use and no one has a good response on the android forums? Really?

THIS WORKED FINE IN ANDROID 10!!!

I have a Samsung note 20 ultra and an S21, the screwup is the same on both phones.

Notifications are not in order! Why? There is no sense to the order they are shown on the Lock Screen notification panel.

The Lock Screen notification panel does not show the latest notifications anymore, it hides them 4 notifications below until you remove that stupid pinned “one of your contacts joined telegram” notification. How do you turn this off?

I DO NOT want to do this on an individual basis I have more important things to do than sit down tweaking settings every time I add a new contact to my phone or install a new app?

Conversations are stuck at the top and stay there even if they are not important and other app notifications are completely missed and added somewhere else in the list.

I just want the normal functionality where I can see my latest notifications as they come in at the top without this stupid priority crap. Android have got the default priorities wrong and assume the apps know which they don’t either.

Why is nobody else complaining about this?

Why am I on the main Android forum and have no constructive responses?

I actually bought the iPhone! And it DOES NOT DO THIS, it behaves like android 10?? But the iPhone is crap.

HOW DO YOU FIX THIS ITS DRIVING ME NUTS!!!!!!!!

 

[Dannydet]

I'm with you on this one.
Google has completely screwed up what once was working fine.
And I don't think they'll resort back, but if you want you can contact the developers at Google and complain about this issue...

 

[puppykickr]

Funny,
I have my device set to not allow any notifications on the lockscreen, and I do not have this problem.

As for the Telegram notification, and any like that from other apps, long press the notification then slide slowly to one side or the other.
When the pinwheel appears, let go and tap the pinwheel.
Turn that particular notification off.

And in your original question, you requested info as to how to 'globally' disable conversation/social notifications.

Globally is a word that in this instance means device wide.

Anyway, I tried alluding to you using Do Not Disturb mode.
There you can select what and when notifications are allowed, along with some other neat features.

Settings
Sound
Do Not Disturb

 

[Philly One]

None of these are decent solutions to the broken userbility that has been introduced. It's simple, anyone can test this.

I'll go through the 2 OBVIOUS bugs again:

The lockscreen is the screen I use most to determine whether I need to look in my phone or not. It SHOULD have a list of the most recent things that require my attention. By default, this is not the case. If you receive two or more notifications from any messaging app (be it some stupid telegram irrelavent group or a WhatsApp msg) you will never see another notification on the lock screen until these "conversation notifications" are removed. How can anyone not see this as a serious problem???? It goes against the whole idea of having a notification screen in the first place. I never see anything unless I delete the conversation notifications. This is an annoying task, something I didn't previously have to do and now causes me to miss almost everything as it happens. I get notification sounds coming out my phone and for the life of me couldn't tell you what app they are coming out of because notifications are so messy.

Next thing, please explain the order of notifications. Why do I have hours old alerting notifications showing up before more recent notifications? There's no strict order, why do I have to scroll through the list to find them?

My phone wasn't like this when I bought it. It was normal. As I said, my iPhone displays everything normal as my android USED to.

Why is it so hard to get a sensible response without being offered stilly workarounds like "use do not disturb" or "go in every notification and switch that off" to something that should be standard?

Where do you find these developers to let them know about this sort of issue?

Really getting sick of this. It's a real deal breaker for this £1250 phone that I clearly have no control over.

 

[puppykickr]

Well, if you are using the lockscreen to decide whether or not to look at your phone...
(surprise?) you are looking at your phone.

If lockscreen notifications are off, as they are for me because they look like **** and there are nosey people where I work, then the little icons in the status bar let me know if there are anything of importance to deal with.

 

[puppykickr]

A few things here.

Your hours old notifications will repeat.
Once they repeat, they are no longer the last in line.
Change your settings for repeat notifications, globally or per app.
Telegram is one where that setting is within the app- and has been for a long time.

Do Not Disturb is not a 'silly workaround', as it is a service built right into the device.
You can choose to use it or not.
It is not a problem just because you see it to be so.

Also, it is not up to you, or any of us for that matter, to decide 'what should be standard'.

And you can complain to the developers all you want- but unless it is an open source app on GitHub, be prepared for being completely ignored or at best a scripted one-fits-all reply that is less satisfying than no reply at all.

To be honest, the lockscreen message feature was never there for anyone to sort through their messages.
It was basically there to let you know that there is a notification of any sort.
Period.
It matters not what that notification may be, only that there is one.

If the Telegram notifications are those that annoy you, here is where they are under Settings, Notifications and Sounds, scroll to the bottom.

 

[puppykickr]

Just to be clear, I an NOT sticking up for Google in any way here.

I hate them.

But, I have learned the hard way myself not to ever allow updates to my devices.

I too become irate (understatement) when my device is 'taken away from me', digitally mutilated, then handed back to me like a favor was done for me.

My only solution was to finally disable the Play Store and other Google apps on all of my devices.

My devices run better, and no more unexpected changes.

 

[Philly One]

I do not use the notification icons in the top of the screen as they are small messy and don't actually give you any detail apart from something happened in x app.

Yes I know its not up to you or me to determine the standard, however I'm sorry to keep going back to iPhones for comparison but lets be honest, the iPhone set the standard for this functionality in the first place and it still works flawlessly OUT THE BOX! It seems Android has chosen to deviate in their path which is fine but not if user experience has to suffer as a result.

Why don't global settings override everything? Why do you have to configure things on a per app basis, why should I have to spend ages configuring the phone for what is normal behaviour?

Do Not Disturb as the name suggests should be used for when I do not want to be disturbed.

To be honest, the lockscreen message feature was never there for anyone to sort through their messages.
It was basically there to let you know that there is a notification of any sort.
Period.
It matters not what that notification may be, only that there is one.

This is complete rubbish. That is what the notification status bar is for. Lock screen notifications are there so that you can go through the notifications on your phone without unlocking it! Pretty self explanatory.

But, I have learned the hard way myself not to ever allow updates to my devices.

I learned that option was taken out of our hands when you use things like banking that require you to have the latest version of the OS in order to run the app.

The bottom line is here this is a silly feature/restriction. I think that's pretty obvious but please don't try to justify poor user experience when there are clear examples of this being done right. All of these reasons and workarounds are shying from the fact that a poor user experience has been introduced.

Im tired of this sh*t.

 

[puppykickr]

Actually, the UI of iphone is absolutely horrid and unintuitive.

Of course you are nit supposed to be able to sort through your messages when the phone is locked- why bother even locking it if you could?
So, just anyone that can get hands on the device at any time can just see all your messages?

This is an obvious security flaw, qnd completely stupid.

What is the difficulty in unlocking the device to sort messages?
The lockscreen notifications are there so that you know that there are or are not messages- and in that case can make the decision to unlock and sort or not.

It has to be done on a per app basis because someone might not want notifications at all from certain apps on the lockscreen.

The vast majority of Android users prefer the great amount of customization available- and don't desire to be roped in to whatever some corporation decides you should have OUT OF THE BOX .

I spent all of 60 seconds with an iphone, and was ready to throw it into a wall.

And then to charge so much money yet give so little in value, it should be a crime.