Master notifications on the Samsung Galaxy S4

One of the great features of modern smartphones is the way that information can be pushed out to them. You can be notified when there is a new email, when someone posts something on Twitter or Facebook, when someone bids on your auction and so on. Notifications are an essential tool and you need to take control of them. Notifications can be a source of irritation when left to the defaults, so here I'll show the techniques to use to filter out the ones you don't want and leave just the important ones.

I'll be using the Samsung Galaxy S4 for this, but everything here applies equally to other Android phones and tablets. The menus may be slightly different depending on the device and version of Android, but that's all.

Notifications produce a sound so that you don't miss them when the phone is in your pocket or the tablet is in a bag. Press the volume up or down key and when the volume control appears on the screen, tap the gear icon. There are several volume controls and one is labelled Notifications. Drag the slider to the desired volume.

Pull down from the top of the screen (the right side) and press the gear icon to go to Settings. In the My Device section, go to Sound. Press Default notification sound. You can choose the sound to produce when there is a notification.

Also in the Sound section is Vibration intensity. Tap it and there are sliders for Incoming call, Haptic feedback, and Notification. Drag the slider to choose whether to have the phone vibrate when there is a notification and by how much.

Go to LED indicator in the My device section of Settings. There is a Notifications section and this enables you to choose whether to flash the LED on the phone whenever you have a new notification. You don't even need to hear the phone, just look at it and if the LED is flashing you have a notification waiting.

Now go to the More section in Settings and Application manager (it may be called Apps on some devices). Tap any application you like and there is an option near the top called Show notifications. When this is ticked the app can display notifications, but not when it is clear. Note that this does not mean that an app will definitely display notifications, just that the system will allow it to if it wants to. It may be an app that doesn't produce notifications. A photo editor for example, might not need any notifications, but a social networking app would produce lots.

You should go to every app listed in Application manager and set the notifications to either on or off as you prefer. I know it is tedious when you have a lot of apps, but it is really useful to turn off notifications except for your favourite apps. Then you won't be overloaded with messages about things you don't care about or things that aren't important.

This isn't quite the end and some apps have notification settings within them. Take Facebook for example. Run it, tap the menu button on the device, and select Settings. There are lots of notification settings for messages, wall posts, comments, and so on. Tick or clear the boxes to allow or prevent them. There are also Vibrate, Phone LED and Notification ringtone settings.

Facebook is unusual in that there are extra notification settings in addition to the notification box in Settings. It is worth looking at the settings in each app to see if there are extra notification settings.

After all this configuration you'll be exhausted, but at least you can sit back and relax. You won't be disturbed by a notification unless it is an important one that you have expressly allowed.