[FEATURE PROPOSAL] Better Notification Control in Message App

When accessing the notifications settings panel in the Message app I noticed that is impossible to turn off the ‘Show notification dot’ toggle. I believe this should be changed to allow more customization and control by the user. I personally do not like to have a notification badge that indicates how many text messages I haven’t read. To me, it takes away my focus from what I am doing and can be a source of distraction, which is the last thing we need from our mobile phones right now.

I would just like the option to be able to turn off all incoming message notifications, even the dot, if I choose to. This toggle can be turned off for the Mail app so I don’t think it would break the usability of the app if the setting was able to be changed by the user.

Hi @Romey wanted to understand what is missing . There is a setting inside the Message app which you can access from the hamburger menu (top left three horizontal lines ) >>Settings > Notifications
which opens up this screen . You can make changes here.


I am checking in a test Pie build so not sure this shows up in other versions as well.

Hi @Manoj My OnePlus 5t is on version 8.1 and I see something different when I access messages and go to the hamburger menu, then to the notifications settings. What I see looks different than your screen. I have not been able to activate my phone with a carrier yet, but I don’t see why that should matter. As you can see from my screenshot the toggle for notification dot is greyed out.

Please can you check Settings >> Apps & notifications >> Notifications >> Allow notification dots is it also greyed out or you can enable it.

It would appear that if I go into setting >apps & notification > ‘see all x apps’ > Message > app notifications, I can toggle notification dot off or on. If I toggle ‘Allow notification dot’ to on in this menu then if I go to Message > Hamburger menu > notifications I can not toggle notification dot off or on.

While this process does work I don’t think it is the best option from a usability perspective, especially if we want people to use /e/ that aren’t tech savvy. It’s a little unintuitive to turn notification dot to ‘on’ to be able to turn the the dot to off in the app’s settings.

Hi there,
I would like, unlike Romey, to have the notifications dot on my apps, but unfortunately I can’t see anywhere where I could activate this. I have absolutely not the same menu as you apparently. Do you know how I can have them ?
Thank you

Hi @Xyguma which version of the build are you on and which device are you using, The settings and screen may have slight differences across OS versions.

I’m on /e/ OS 0.7-2020010636667 and I have a Samsung S7 which I bought from you, /e/OS

So do you have an idea for how to have notification dots ?