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On my iphone, there is a "notifications" setting section, which basically just allows me to choose which apps has the power to notify me.

I was wondering if there's anything similar that is available on the Samsung Galaxy s2?

Basically, we have a new app called Scramble For Friends. And it keeps notifying us every time someone has finished their turn so that I can play. We play random people so this could be in the middle of the night or in a meeting etc.

It just vibrates but still - it's annoying and we want to turn it off. We also don't want to turn off other notifications like Email, Facebook etc. - we just want to turn off the notifications for Scramble For Friends.

I've been looking around in the Settings but there doesn't seem to be a universal page which deals just with notifications.

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Your username is great.. :) –  Sachin Shekhar May 6 '12 at 22:19
this might help. –  Aniket Thakur Sep 17 at 20:56

3 Answers 3

up vote 22 down vote accepted

Update: It is posible to disable notifications of individual apps on system level in Jelly Bean (4.1).

Under each application info screen there is now a checkbox for "show notifications" (assuming the app sends notifications). Uncheck that and no more notifications from that app.

You can get to the screen by going to Settings | Apps | {application} or, more conveniently, long-pressing the notification itself and then tapping "App Info".

More details in this article.

Notifications are handled on a per-app basis.
The only way to turn them off is inside that particular application's settings.
This menu - unlike on iOS - can he accessed from inside the application. It's usually an option that comes up after pressing your menu button, or if your phone doesn't have one than it's hidden behind the overflow menu ie. The three dots.

In the case of scramble with friends there's a settings icon on the main screen. There's an option to set the polling interval. The default is 5 minutes.

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If the app has one. One could easily forget adding this setting. –  Erik May 6 '12 at 9:05
really? why would android trust the app to do this? So you could have all these apps that you never use on your phone but it'd be impossible to get them to stop executing something in the background? –  Diskdrive May 6 '12 at 9:09
That would be construed as a design flaw. A good app developer would allow a user to completely quit / unload his app from memory - not leaving anything running in the background. –  Sparx May 6 '12 at 9:11
@Diskdrive If you never use an app you can just as well uninstall it. Besides, unnecessary notifications are merely annoying but no security hazard. –  Erik May 6 '12 at 9:11
@Diskdrive updated answer. It was there all along. –  Richard Borcsik May 6 '12 at 10:54

If you are on Jelly Bean and rooted you can use an app I built to manage notifications for all applications from a single place.

Notifications Off allows you to turn off notifications for all applications. It can also automatically disable notifications for new apps as soon as they are installed.

The next version will have support for profiles, tasker integration and a widget for switching profiles.

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Does sending notifications require a special permission? If it does, Permissions Denied could help.

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It does not. developer.android.com/guide/topics/ui/notifiers/notifications .html besides if it would than revoking it could cause the app to force close whenever it wants to notify the user. –  Richard Borcsik May 6 '12 at 9:18

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