How to Turn Off Notifications Temporarily on Android

Notifications are a godsend until you need to do something important on your phone. that’s when notifications become a curse. Picture this: you are sharing a screen during your meeting or class, and your friend sends you a really awkward message. All the meeting participants will see the notification. Fortunately, such a blooper can easily be avoided by temporarily turning off notifications on your Android phone.

Also read: How to Manage Your Notifications on Android

Pause All Notifications on Android Using Do Not Disturb Mode

While putting the phone on silent is one way to turn off notifications, it will only turn off sound notifications. You will still get pop-up notifications on the screen. To turn off notifications temporarily on Android, you need to enable the Do Not Disturb (DND) mode on Android.

It lets you turn off all notifications with a single button. You can customize and create exceptions for how and what kind of notifications you want to receive.

Here’s how to enable it:

1. Open Settings on your phone and go to Sound & vibration.

2. Tap on Do not Disturb. On Samsung phones, go to “Settings -> Notifications -> Do not disturb.” If you don’t find “Do not disturb” in either of these two places, use the search bar at the top in the settings to search for it.

3. Tap on the “Turn on now” button to activate it. Alternatively, enable the toggle next to “Do not disturb.” You will also need to customize the DND mode according to your needs.

You will find many customization settings on this screen. The most important one is the hide or hidden notification settings. Tap on it. You will again see more customization settings. Enable the setting for “No visual or sound from notifications.” On Samsung, you will have “Hide pop-up notifications.”

When enabled, you will not receive sound or pop-up notifications. The notification panel will appear empty and will not hold any notifications. However, once you disable DND mode, all the missed notifications will appear in the notification panel.

Apart from that, you can create exceptions where you can set which apps, sounds, and people can turn on notifications automatically. You can even create a DND schedule so that the mode is activated and deactivated automatically at the set times.

When you are interested in receiving the notifications normally on your phone, you simply have to turn off DND mode. For that, repeat step 2 above and turn off DND mode. Alternatively, you can turn it off from Quick settings, which can be accessed by swiping down from the notification panel. DND mode can be enabled from Quick settings, too, after you have set the customization settings per your needs.

Pause Notifications for Individual Apps

The above method lets you turn off notifications for all apps. If you want to disable notifications temporarily only for a couple of apps, do that using the app’s individual notification settings.

1. Open Settings and go to Apps.

2. Under the installed or all apps section, look for the app whose notifications you want to turn off. Using WhatsApp as an example, tap on WhatsApp followed by Notifications.

3. Turn off the first toggle. It should say something similar to “All WhatsApp notifications” or “Show notifications.” Doing so will turn off all WhatsApp notifications. That is, when you receive a new message, it will silently arrive in the WhatsApp app without sending a notification. You will need to open WhatsApp to check for new messages.

Similarly, turn off notifications for other apps by turning off the top toggle. You can further customize and turn off notifications for individual categories under an app. For instance, you can only turn off group messages without turning off individual messages. You will find all the customization settings under the app notification settings.

Frequently Asked Questions

1. How to turn off Android notifications at night?

Using the schedule feature of DND mode, you can turn off notifications automatically at night time. Choose the start and end times as per your need.

2. Do other people know when you turn off notifications?

No. Other people won’t be informed that you have turned off notifications.

3. Can I pause notifications by enabling Airplane Mode?

Turning on airplane mode will not disable the notifications. However, since you are no longer connected to the Internet, your apps won’t be able to send you notifications. So indirectly, you can pause notifications from web-based apps by enabling airplane mode, but not from your local app (like your Calendar or Reminder app) that doesn’t require Internet connection. Also, if you want to do something on the internet while keeping notifications paused, this trick wouldn’t help.

Wrapping Up

That’s how to disable notifications temporarily on your Android phone. If you want, you can even hide notifications from the lock screen on your Android phone. Android also offers many ways to customize notifications.