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The 10 Commandments of Notifications, as revealed to Reddit

This hilarious list of the Ten Commandments of Notifications aims to guide developers towards the path of righteousness.
By
January 21, 2016
Book_of_Exodus_Chapter_21-1_(Bible_Illustrations_by_Sweet_Media)

You gotta love Reddit. In between all the bickering, wannabe 4Channing and general one-upmanship of the site, occasional gems float to the surface, like this brilliant list of the ten commandments of notifications. The list was revealed to Redditor el47000 for the benefit of developers, so they can live a pure life, free from angry users that want their head on a stick for generating too many push notifications.  Read on, developers, and wash away your sins.

The 10 Commandments of Notifications

1) Thou shalt not nag or remind me to open thy app.

2) Thou shalt have one button to turn off all notifications from thy app, and then if ye wish it, thou may include more fine-grained notification controls.

3) Thou shalt make it easy to set thy app’s notifications to silent, which means no sound and no vibration.

Nexus 6P Marshmallow Silent Mode notifications vibrate

4) Speakingeth of vibration, thou shalt vibrate only when specifically requested, and ye shalt never set notification vibration on by default.

5) Remember: place no icons in my status bar by default, only when I specifically requesteth them.

6) Thou shalt not make notifications persistent and hard to dismiss without good reason, like if thine notification has an actionable button or something else worthwhile and good.

7) HONOR thy limits on repetitive notifications: no more than one notification over a reasonable period of time. Basically, if someone sends me ten messages over a 30 second period, I should get ONE notification, not ten. For cryingeth out loud.

8) HONOR thy limits on priority: thine notifications should not be special by default. Only messaging and communication apps should “pop up” by default, everyone else shall remember thine appropriate place and get out of my face.

Android Authority Marshmallow notifications

9) Thou shalt not create custom notification sounds without permission, just use the default notification sound by default.

10) Thou shalt not make your notifications settings inconsistent or hard to find in your app.

Bonus 11th Commandment: If thine app is Candy Crush, thou shalt never notify me nor anyone about my candy crushing.

Consider the path to a righteous developer existence laid down before thee. If you have some more commandments to share, hit the comments below or share them on the original Reddit thread, which also has some funny in-character commentary going on. Nice work Reddit, today you earned your daily bread. Salvation is at hand.