How To Set Android App Notifications To Silent Status

One area in which Android always had an upper hand over iOS is… notifications. Android has a much more robust notifications system that the competitive operating system, and that’s a fact. That being said, we’ll talk only about a part of it in today’s article. We’re focusing on one thing here, we’ll show you how to set Android app notifications to a silent status. There is actually more than one way to do it.

Do note that we’ll demonstrate this on the Google Pixel 4a, which runs Android 12, in this example. So, we’re demonstrating this feature on stock Android. Do note that most other Android skins function similarly, but not all of them. It’s possible that it works differently on your phone despite the fact you’re running Android 12. The differences shouldn’t be too big, though, and you should still be able to do the same thing.

How to set Android app notifications to the silent status

First and foremost, it’s worth noting that depending on the app, there may be more than one notification channel thrown into the mix. When it comes to instant messaging apps, for example, you usually have a Chats channel, Calls channel, and so on. We’ll talk more about that soon. So, let’s tackle the main way to handle silencing notifications on Android.

The first thing you’ll need to do is navigate to your phone’s settings. Swipe up on the home screen, and find the ‘Settings’ app, or access it any other way you want.

Once you’re in the settings, navigate to the ‘Apps’ menu.

There, you’ll need to get access to a full list of your apps. In the case of stock Android, you’ll need to tap the ‘See all [NUMBER] apps’ option.

Once a full list of apps opens, simply choose which app you’d like to control. We’ll go for Facebook Messenger, for example.

Once you tap on the desired app, you’ll see the ‘Notifications’ menu. Tap it.

In that menu, you’ll see the ‘Notifications’ section. As you can see, there are various channels that are allowed to send notifications to my device from this app. Those channels include Chats, Calls, Stories, Reminders, and so on. For this particular example, let’s put ‘Chats’ aka instant messages on silent. Tap on ‘Chats’.

Once the next menu opens, you’ll see the ‘Silent’ option, below the ‘Default’ setting. Tap it.

The moment you select it, you’ll see the ‘No sound or vibration’ explanation below it. There are also some additional options below you can choose. As you can see, the pap will continue showing me the notification dot in this mode, but I can remove that as well. I can also tell it to override Do Not Disturb mode, and more. Set this any way you want, but the point is, the phone won’t ring or vibrate when a new message arrives, while the notification will still arrive and be visible in the notification shade.

A faster way to do it

There is actually another way to do this, but you need to have an active notification for it. So, if you, for example, get a reminder from Google Keep aka Keep Notes, but you’d like to prevent it from making your phone ring or vibrate in the future, here’s how you can do that.

When you receive such a notification, swipe down to open your notification shade.

Hold your finger down on the wanted notification, in this case it’s the Google Keep one. A new menu will appear, with a direct setting for making such notifications silent.

You cannot fine-tune anything from this menu, but you can quickly switch the setting for it, which can be really useful. So, simply choose the ‘Silent’ option, tap ‘Apply’, and you’re good to go.