How To Schedule or Stop WhatsApp or any App Notifications during Night or Meetings

Question. I use the Samsung Galaxy S7 phone & would like to stop getting the notification sounds that interrupt the sleep during the night. Is there a way this could be scheduled so I do not have to disable the WiFi or the 4G connectivity but do not get disturbed with those annoying WhatsApp message alerts that keep coming in. ~Ash

Answer: Hey Ash, you do not have to worry about this problem because it’s something that millions of users have been facing & in this article we are going to share a few tips & ways that could help you fix the same. Before getting started you need to make a note that the phone you are using should be updated to the latest software version. This is important because post the Android 6.0 update all the applications installed on your phone need to have the permission to push the notifications. You can review these permissions prior to installing the app but scroll down under “Developer” and touch Permission details.

Once you have installed the apps, you will be shown a dialog box to allow or deny permission requests. You can obviously make changes to this in the later stage too by visiting the application manager > app > permissions > tap on switch option to the right to enable it back. These permissions are good, but the problem only arises when you start getting a whole lot of them. In most cases people are interested in application notifications from WhatsApp, Facebook & Gmail because most of the alerts are probably some one-on-one discussions that could need a response. You can disable them completely, but the next time you need to check out the pending notifications, you will have to head over to the application manually and check them out. This is something that is not feasible and practically would not be the right solution to this problem. (OnePlus 3 is an example)

Silent Everything:
SEER App is an application that works for devices with Android 4.0 or later. The term SEER stands for Silence everything except ringer that would literally stop all the notification sounds on your phone except the phone ringer which is of course required. You can check out the settings & options that the app offers all for free. Under the schedule feature, you get to opt only 1 set of timings for the 24-hour cycle but that’s good enough if you wish to use the app only for the night disturbances. You can also override the schedule option and use the application to silence everything by just tapping on the option in the main screen that says > Silence Now.

WP-Appbox: Seer (Silence Notifications) (Free, Google Play) →

Using NFC Tags:
If your phone supports NFC Tags & if you do not wish to use a separate application to achieve this task, you can make use of the tags. Stick them somewhere close to your bed where you keep your phone every day & then write the task of putting the phone into silent mode when tapped. Depending on the NFC Tag Writer application you can set this task to be achieved because a few also offer you to just turn off notifications when tapped. There are a very few Smartphones in the market that could offer you this functionality. (Best NFC Smartphones)

Using Priority Mode:
At the Android 5.0 Lollipop announcement, Google had introduced the Priority Mode feature that helps you in setting up the do not disturb times that help you in managing the notifications. The best part of this feature is that you can allow a few specific applications and contacts to send you notifications while all the others are completely disabled. It is almost close to the Airplane mode except that without any audio alerts, you shall get the call & message alerts on the notifications window. In order to activate these you need to just press the volume buttons following which you shall get a few options. Here you can tap on Priority and you can select either indefinitely or for a selected time. Hence, if you want to enable this during an office meeting then you shall not get any distractions while you are busy with your work.

You can also schedule these options, under the Interruptions option that can be found when tapping on the Gear Icon on the dialog box mentioned above. Here you can decide if you would like to allow only priority interruptions when calls and notifications arrive. It’s a little confusing and hard to setup but then you can set the “Start Time” & the “End Time” following which you get alerts only when allowed. You can also configure the individual app interruptions from “Sound & Notification” screen & tapping on the “App Notifications” option.

The most important point to make a note is that these modes are only available on the Stock Android & not on the customized OS like the Samsung’s Touchwiz (Galaxy Note 7). If you are having a phone that’s having a customized UI, then it is better to check out the other solutions mentioned above.

Selectively Disabling Alerts:
If you have a lot of applications, few of which are important to you then its time to avoid all the applications that can get this task done & spend some time in manually selecting notifications and disabling them. The next time you get a notification from any application, say a food app asking you to order the lunch, just long press on it & tap on “Disable Notifications”. Another option would be going to your Phone Settings > Notifications & tapping on every App you want to stop getting any alerts from. This option does help you in quickly finding all those annoying applications that were wasting your time & also distracting. Do make a note that once you disable, you will have to revisit the same section to re-enable it back.

There are many other applications available on the Google Play Store, that you could give a try but my recommendation would be to manually tweak the settings instead of opting a blanket ban on all. Let us know if you found any other useful ways to blocking or managing the notifications on your Android Phone in the comments section below.

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