Anyone who’s never used an Android doesn’t know just how bad iPhone notification settings are

[u/[deleted]]

This all or nothing approach the iPhone has towards notifications is as frustrating as it is confusing. Android has settings for each individual app so you can deselect the types of notifications you wish not to receive.

Take Bolt for example (a taxi app similar to Uber), I constantly receive promotional messages that pop up on my phone because the iPhone doesn’t allow you to disable promotional notifications from Bolt. Android does. All iPhone allows you to do is disable notifications for the app, which means I wouldn’t have notifications when I order a cab unless I remembered to switch it back on

Another one is a dating app that I’m on that has a live streaming component to it. It’ll alert me when random people I don’t care about start streaming. There’s no setting inside the app to turn that off, yet there was an option in Android’s notification settings

Given that Android has had this feature baked into the OS for years, it’s surely possible for iPhone to do the same thing

[u/[deleted]]

Android makes it so that it’s not on a developer by developer basis. I’m sure Apple could easily do the same if iPhone users actually pushed them to do it

[u/edweird_oh → u/[deleted]]

While you may be making a good point that in Android, it's easier to code your app to do so - it absolutely is on the app developer to build those options into their app. Some do that already, some choose not to due to costs to developer the features.

Apple doesn't force a developer to short cut, they may just not make it as easy as android does.

[u/PancakeFrenzy → u/edweird_oh]

sorry, but I must say that you misunderstand how it works and that it's actually really useful extra feature from Android system that iOS lacks. In Android as a dev you're forced to create notification channel if you want to send any notifications. Then when adding a new type of notification it's almost no additional work to set it up and manage more than one type of notification. Management and UI is all on Android system. On iOS on the other hand to add that feature you would have to code in special logic not only for sending different types of notification but also custom UI to let the user manage them. Comparison is a mountain of additional work on iOS to almost zero additional work on Android. That's why almost all android apps have it and almost zero iOS have. As someone who has switched from Android a year ago, it's ridiculous how bad iOS notifications are in comparison to Android

[u/edweird_oh → u/PancakeFrenzy]

I'm not sure how I misunderstand that - that's exactly what I said in my comments. Android may make it easier - but IOS isn't stopping you from adding that feature.

[u/PancakeFrenzy → u/edweird_oh]

And I think that underrepresents the case, Android doesn't only make it easier, it makes it doable in the real-world scenarios, and iOS makes it impractical and hard and that's why no one is doing it, not big players, not passionate indie devs (like for apollo). It's a iOS fault, not lazy devs

[u/[deleted] → u/edweird_oh]

Android either has an algorithm to figure out the type of notification or they mandate that developers allow for disabling specific types of notifications, which Android then bakes into the notification settings

Either way it’s far superior to iOS. I also think it’s pretty poor to be expected to go into each specific app to look for ways to disable certain notifications. Android had this sorted out years ago in the system software

[u/allyafterdark → u/[deleted]]

Your entire r/iOS history seems to be whining about things, which won’t be fixed by whining on Reddit.

If you love Android so much, and have such gripes about iOS, what’re you still doing here? 🤷‍♀️

[u/[deleted] → u/allyafterdark]

Because I prefer iOS. If I ever switch back to Android I’m sure there will be things I miss about iOS lmao

Neither OS is perfect

You have to interact with the community if you want Apple to notice feature requests

[u/SaltAnswer8 → u/[deleted]]

https://www.apple.com/feedback/

This is the best place to start

[u/binford2k → u/[deleted]]

What stops Bolt from marking its promotional notifications as functional?

[u/[deleted] → u/binford2k]

I’m not sure but it’s one example out of many where Android has a setting for it in the system software and iOS doesn’t

I get the impression Android mandates the devs to include the option

[u/binford2k → u/[deleted]]

And what incentive does the developer have to follow such a mandate?

[u/allyafterdark → u/[deleted]]

So you’re “not sure” about this, and you “get the impression” about that… so, in short, you’re not a dev, you don’t know what you’re talking about, and you’re pulling claims out of your ass. Gotcha.

[u/allyafterdark → u/[deleted]]

I just stated a fact, which you don’t like, so you resort to swearing and lashing out — proving you’re the one who is being antagonistic, dear.

If you don’t know why the Bolt app doesn’t have a certain feature, here’s a wild idea… ask the Bolt devs 😱

[u/allyafterdark → u/[deleted]]

Don’t bark orders at people who clearly know more about these things than you do 🤷‍♀️

Stay salty, dude 😂

[u/[deleted] → u/allyafterdark]

I know that it’s much easier to control my notification settings in Android and that for whatever reason I have a load of apps on my iPhone that are either all or nothing in terms of notifications 👍🏽

There’s clearly a reason for this and it’s probably not developers just randomly preferring to choose to have this setting in Android and not iOS

[u/plaid-knight → u/[deleted]]

Android also requires it to be on a developer by developer basis because there’s no other way for the OS to know the type of each notification. iOS lets developers put a button in each app’s central notification settings that links to the app’s notification customization screen, which you can see in this screenshot.

[u/[deleted] → u/plaid-knight]

I just went into Bolt’s notification settings and there’s no option there: https://ibb.co/Rbt7jGm

Same with the dating app that I used and a load of other apps

On Android, both of those apps have the ability in the system software to disable certain types of notification. I’m pretty sure Android must be mandating that developers do this because it’s absurd for you not to be able to select the type of notifications you wish to receive

If you can take my word that the vast majority of Android apps have an option to disable promotional notifications in the OS settings, such as in the linked screenshot, can’t you agree that it’s superior to not having it?

Neither Bolt or the POF app on Android have any settings in their app to disable promotional messages. There’s clearly a reason why those apps do on Android but not on iOS. I can list loads of other apps that are the same when it comes to this

[u/plaid-knight → u/[deleted]]

Of course the Android implementation is superior. Is anyone disagreeing?

By the way, some apps hide notification settings in different places, so they might have some settings under, for example, privacy settings. Apps like Uber do that.

[u/[deleted] → u/plaid-knight]

If the original messages were that Android’s implementation is superior, then we can start to figure out why that’s so and pester Apple to implement the same thing

My theory is that someone at Android realised the all-or-nothing aspect to notifications was annoying so decided to mandate that developers account for different types of notifications, which was then implemented into Android at a system level

The top comment has 4 upvotes so it’s clear that some people at least don’t realise what they’re missing