Because not all notifications are equally important

One of Android's key strengths as a platform lies in how it handles notifications. As an Android user, you get a lot of control over your alerts, so you can make sure the less important stuff doesn't get in the way. By default, most notifications will arrive with a sound and/or vibrate, depending on your phone's current alert settings. You can use Do Not Disturb (or Priority Mode in Android 13) to silence all your notifications for a period of time, but that's a drastic option. Thankfully, you can set individual notifications from specific apps to silent — they won't ring or vibrate, and they'll also be moved down to a less prominent place in your notification shade. This guide will show you how to set any notification to silent so you won't be bothered by annoying app notifications any longer.

This guide was checked using Android 13 Developer Preview 2 on a Pixel smartphone.

The steps you need to take to silence a notification remain the same on Android 13. Nothing has changed so far, but we will update the guide if the process or terminology is different for the final release of Android 13.

Just like snoozing notifications and other notification settings, silencing is based on notification channels. If you look at the notification settings for any app, you'll likely see more than one notification type, and these are called channels on Android. When you silence a notification, you're actually silencing that specific channel, so it's important to understand how this works. For example, if you look at the Google Calendar notification settings below, you can see it has three distinct notification channels: Calendar notifications, Background sync, and Task notifications.

If you set Calendar notifications to silent, this will mean that alerts related to calendar events will no longer make sound or vibrate, but Task reminders will not be affected, as they are controlled via a separate channel. Bear this in mind when setting app notifications to silent, as it won't necessarily apply to all alert types from each app.

Pixel phones run what many refer to as "stock" Android. Smartphones and tablets from Motorola, Nokia, Sony, and Asus run very similar software, so the steps in this section will also apply. For Samsung-specific guidance, skip to the One UI section. If your device is made by another manufacturer and these steps don't help, try searching "Notifications" in your settings and see if notification silencing is an option under each app's notification settings.

There's more than one way to silence notifications, but we'll start with the easiest...

This is the best method as you won't have to worry about looking through the app's notification channels. Just select the notification you want to silence and you can do it right from the shade without digging around in the settings.

Any notifications from that app that are under the same notification will now come through as silent and appear at the bottom of your notification shade in the Silent section.

This option is useful if you want to check or change the settings for multiple notification channels within an app.

Notifications under that channel will now be silenced. You'll need to do that for each notification channel you wish to come through without sound or vibration.

An alternative way to get to the notification settings for an app is to long-press a notification and tap the settings cog in the top right (see below). You'll be taken to the settings page and the corresponding notification channel will be highlighted.

Features such as this sometimes work a little differently on Samsung Galaxy phones and tablets with the company's own One UI skin on top of Android. Let's take a look at how to silence notifications on your Galaxy device. One key difference in terminology is that Samsung refers to notification channels as Categories instead, so keep that in mind.

As with other Android phones, the simplest way is right from the notification shade...

This option is useful if you want to check or change the settings for multiple notification channels within an app.

And that's all there is to it. If you change your mind and would like to turn a silent notification back into a noisy one, simply follow the same steps and change the setting back to its default.

Senior UK Editor — My interest in Android began with the beautiful Nexus 4 and the less-ugly-than-before Jelly Bean. Right now, I'm probably watching Black Books, playing football (soccer), or listening to Answer Code Request.