[HN Gopher] DoNotNotify is now Open Source
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DoNotNotify is now Open Source
A month ago, I submitted my app "DoNotNotify" to control Android
notifications on Show HN [0], and it trended on the front page for
a day. I was happy, but the most upvoted comments on the thread
were asking for the app to be open sourced, since it dealt with
system-wide notifications. My promises weren't good enough, and the
community wanted more! Why didn't I open source it in the first
place? Linux has been by primary driver for more than a decade. I
genuinely believe in the philosophy, and have always wanted to give
back to the community. The primary reason, probably, was because I
was ashamed that I had 90% vibe-coded the app. More than 2 decades
of writing software, and my first contribution to FOSS would be AI-
generated code? Would it withstand even the most minimal of
scrutiny? Would by (unknown) name forever be tarnished? I
exaggerate, but only slightly :) So, yesterday, after a fair bit
of trepidation, I changed the github repo visibility to public and
put up a announcement on the app's website [1]. I have also
submitted the app to F-Droid [2]. As before, I welcome the
community's feedback and suggestions! [0]
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46499646 [1]
https://donotnotify.com/opensource.html [2]
https://gitlab.com/fdroid/rfp/-/issues/3569 -- Anuj Jain
Author : awaaz
Score : 362 points
Date : 2026-02-08 07:39 UTC (15 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (donotnotify.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (donotnotify.com)
| cranberryturkey wrote:
| I started doing all my projects as open source from the beginning
| The problem isn't "well then they won't pay" there tons of coders
| and open source users who would gladly save time and energy with
| paid hosted version this is what I offer potential customers
| that's not even the hard part the hard part is and always will be
| marketing and sales and distribution
| awaaz wrote:
| This isn't really a commercial project, so not much of that
| applies.
| stavros wrote:
| You should still add an IAP to the Play Store build, and make
| it "paid" even if it has no different features. There are
| dozens of us who support OSS apps, dozens!
| IshKebab wrote:
| I'm surprised Android has an API for one app to block
| notifications from other apps. I guess enjoy it while it lasts.
| manarth wrote:
| The NotificationListenerService.
|
| It has genuine use-cases such as this DoNotNotify app, but
| could easily be misused - e.g. malware intercepting a wallet
| OTP notification and forwarding it to the attacker.
|
| Access to the API is controlled by a specific permission which
| users have to explicitly enable in "Special app access".
|
| https://developer.android.com/reference/android/service/noti...
| niobe wrote:
| Real risk of them blocking or crippling it at some point.
| They've nerfed a lot of useful things over time, Wi-Fi
| scanning being one good example.
| berkes wrote:
| Another legitimate use case are e.g. Event Reminder, which
| intercept my calendar notifications and turn them into full
| screen alarms.
|
| My distracted ADHD brain misses event notifications just too
| often, but with this app, even I my phone is in another room,
| I get reminded of that meeting, in time.
| wundersam wrote:
| Appreciate the transparency about the AI-assisted development.
| Your concerns about code quality are valid, but you're
| overthinking it. We've all shipped worse code that we wrote
| ourselves.The real win here is that you listened to feedback and
| made it verifiable. That's what the privacy-conscious Android
| community needed. The fact that it already works well in
| production is a bonus.
| nextlevelwizard wrote:
| Why does Android need this? Does the OS not let you control
| notifications?
| niobe wrote:
| I assume this allows more granularity. Many apps avoid you
| blocking their marketing by not using the notification
| categories system. It's all or nothing. This app would
| presumably allow me to differentiate between the two if it
| can't be done with notification categories.
| manarth wrote:
| Android does, at the level of "Allow notifications from app X"
| and "Block notifications from app X".
|
| DoNotNotify gives granularity and rules (which a specific app
| may have chosen not to implement).
|
| For example: "Allow <budget airline app X> to
| display notifications of gate changes" "Block <budget
| airline app X> from displaying advertising notifications"
| gschizas wrote:
| Android 15/16 does allow you to control notifications even
| lower, at the level of notification category, but indeed the
| app must have chosen to use them.
| wolvoleo wrote:
| Yeah the problem is a lot of apps dump their ads in the
| wrong category if they even use categories :(
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| Most apps that are in need of notification control either:
|
| a) bundle everything in one category, from critical
| notifications without which the app can't fulfill its
| purpose to "HEY YOU HAVEN'T USED ME IN A DAY, USE ME NOW"
| spam
|
| b) create a new category for spam every time they feel
| enough users have turned off the previous one, which is
| often
| eterm wrote:
| Companies do it with email unsubscribe categories to,
| which is skirting laws for sure.
| surajrmal wrote:
| I wish app review checked for this. It's hostile anti
| user behavior.
| g947o wrote:
| OEMs like Samsung turn off that ability by default unless
| you toggle it in "advanced settings". Thank you Samsung!
| Suppafly wrote:
| It does, but this appears to have a lot more granularity. You
| don't always want to block an entire app, sometimes you just
| want to block some of the notifications from a specific app.
| xeromal wrote:
| To give you an example of what this is form, some apps like to
| bundle notification categories in such a way that the Tracking
| notification is the same as the "Buy this item on sale"
| notification and you can't granularly turn it off. It's 100%
| intentional.
| nerdsniper wrote:
| Very proud of you for doing this! I think attitudes around vibe-
| coded software have been changing a lot over those past two
| months. Not just on a single axis of "accepted" vs. "rejected"
| but evolving along many axes. Thank you for helping Android users
| customize their digital environment.
| baxuz wrote:
| How does it compare to
| https://galaxystore.samsung.com/detail/com.samsung.systemui....?
| plz_throw wrote:
| ...
|
| Is this for real, like do you really not see the difference?
| Not tryingto be snarky or sth, just struggle to comprehend
| this.
|
| You compare apples to oranges here. From a short look at the
| provided link, i guess it doesn'tcompare at all because it's
| something completely different?
|
| Link you provided seems to be Samsung or OneUI only, integrated
| with Good Lock. This seems to collect and present notifications
| together with the ability to search. Does not seem to be open
| source.
|
| DoNotNotify allows you to restrict apps to only sending you
| certain kinds of notifications.
|
| They could supplement each other but you can't compare them as
| far as i'm concerned.
| g947o wrote:
| I think that would have been an excellent answer if it didn't
| come with the first two paragraphs.
|
| I couldn't tell the difference at a glance without being
| familiar with both apps.
| plz_throw wrote:
| As is said, not trying to rude or sarcastic or anything.
|
| I do not use any of the apps and just had a short look at
| the respective pages to see what they are. Both clearly
| state the repsective apps purpose, both have images of the
| apps.
|
| I thought it was (in both cases) pretty clear what the
| respexctive app is and what not.
| nasretdinov wrote:
| Ever since iOS introduced "reduce interruptions" mode I've been
| using it ever since and it's really great. It's not as
| customisable as this app, but I still highly recommend anything
| like this for those who're tired of notifications spam
| systemz wrote:
| I would pay a lot to have this on iPhone as I'm distracted easily
| due to my ADHD. iOS doesn't have as granular notification
| configuration as Android (topics?) plus Apple probably wouldn't
| agree to funnel all notification through 3rd party app.
| manarth wrote:
| You're right - the app sandbox model in iOS prevents inter-app
| communication of notifications, and there is no iOS equivalent
| to the Android ListenerNotificationService API.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| This is what drove me to uninstall Facebook, twitter, etc. I
| use their websites if I occasionally want to visit. I don't
| want notifications hooking me into my phone.
| kilroy123 wrote:
| For me the biggest pain was email.
|
| I created a free and open source set of filters to fix this.
| Soooo much better.
|
| https://unfuck.email
| systemz wrote:
| This addresses email notifications only. There is a lot of
| apps that would send you notifications that you want to see
| like your hardware needs attention but also sends some
| useless promo notifications
| bartread wrote:
| I'm not an Android user, but props to you for taking the feedback
| onboard and doing this, Anuj. Lot of respect for you. In an era
| of eroded privacy, intrusive notifications, and enshittification
| you've done a genuinely positive and helpful thing to allow
| ordinary users to fight back.
|
| And, yes, some people will criticise code quality but (a) if
| those people aren't actively contributing to the product then you
| should ignore them, and (b) I suspect the complainers will
| largely be drowned out by the many who will support your
| decision.
|
| You certainly aren't the only highly experienced engineer vibe-
| coding their way through a problem - I'm leaning very heavily on
| Claude, and somewhat on ChatGPT, at the startup I'm working on at
| the moment.
|
| Thank you, Anuj!
| awaaz wrote:
| You're very kind, thank you!
| mentalgear wrote:
| Kudos on open-sourcing!
| blks wrote:
| Shame is a good instinct here.
| mexicocitinluez wrote:
| Ahh yes, the shame that comes with using tools that can help
| you accomplish your tasks and build software for others to use.
| berkes wrote:
| What about the shame for publicly criticizing someone who put
| their software out there?
|
| Where was the instinct that held you back to reply is such a
| confrontational way?
| storm1er wrote:
| I would gladly pay a dollar in the official store to get this
| app, even knowing it can be downloaded for free from GitHub
| dhruv3006 wrote:
| Great step!
| baxuz wrote:
| How do you add rules to the app?
| awaaz wrote:
| The starting point is a notification from an app that you want
| to create a rule for. So you wait for a notification, then
| click on it in the "History" tab, and then you can configure
| the rest from there. It's slightly non-intuitive, but the
| reason for that flow is that the app needs the package name of
| the app, which almost nobody will know.
| pndy wrote:
| Does this by any chance works against built-in applications that
| don't allow you to disable notifications?
|
| Last week I was configuring Samsung for my mother and it
| constantly nags her with notification for setting up Samsung
| account (that's not the worst offender tho) and frankly that
| would really help here.
| awaaz wrote:
| It should be able to, unless they are using Live Update [0]
| notifications.
|
| [0]
| https://developer.android.com/develop/ui/views/notifications...
| Quarrel wrote:
| Good for you.
|
| FWIW, I suspect there isn't a single programmer you admire that
| hasn't looked back on moments in their career and cringed at some
| of their own code.
|
| In some ways, I think it is the hurdle that Linus overcame as an
| undergraduate that I admire the most. Just putting it out there.
| This is code. Look at it. It might not amount to anything, but
| who dares wins.
| positive-spite wrote:
| Happy to see this! :)
|
| Hope I find time to contribute :)
| the_harpia_io wrote:
| the shame around vibe-coded stuff is real but honestly - most of
| the code out there wouldn't survive scrutiny either, AI-generated
| or not. the difference is that vibe coding fails in predictable
| patterns. weirdly verbose error handling that doesn't actually
| handle the error, auth flows that work great until you send a
| malformed header, things like that.
|
| for notifications specifically, the risky bits would be: what
| happens if an app sends a notification payload that's malformed
| or huge, how do you handle permission checks if the notification
| system process restarts mid-filtering, and whether the filtering
| rules can be bypassed by crafting notifications with weird mime
| types or encoded text.
|
| if you wrote tests for those edge cases (or even just thought
| through them), you're already ahead of 90% of shipped code, vibe-
| coded or not. the scrutiny you're worried about is actually
| healthy - peer review catches stuff automated tools miss.
| hnarn wrote:
| "First we write the bad code, then we write the good code."
|
| Your concerns are valid but not unique to AI generated code, the
| same feeling has existed for as long as open source software has
| existed: is my code good enough, will I just look stupid when
| people suggest oversights and mistakes?
|
| The fact of the matter is that if you have created software that
| solves an actual issue, especially if that issue was previously
| unsolved, you have created something valuable. Making it open
| source only means that the code is now open to contribution,
| forks, or other modifications by anyone using it.
|
| The performative idea of open source software being a part of
| your resume and written only to increase your personal brand is a
| perversion of what the open source movement originally was about.
| It's about learning, and you learn by making mistakes, regardless
| of whether your bad code was written completely from your own
| brain or from the suggestion of an LLM.
|
| Don't ever be afraid to open source your code, nobody has any
| right to expect anything from you, and if they do they are just
| too stupid to understand that free and open code is always a
| gift, regardless of how bad it is, if it solves a problem for
| real people.
| defenestrated wrote:
| I use FilterBox and Buzzkill.
|
| FilterBox does seem to be superior with an inbuilt offline ML
| model to filter spam notifications, whilst also having a robust
| set of heuristic filtering options.
|
| It's also amongst the snazziest apps to use with a design that
| delights. Best lifetime IAP I made 7+years ago.
|
| FilterBox: https://filterbox.catchingnow.com/ Comparison post:
| https://www.reddit.com/r/androidapps/comments/hsq7ep/buzzkil...
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