Phones can be distracting, with notifications popping up all the time to snare our attention and maybe even ruin our lives. [Guy Dupont] wishes to be no slave to the machine, and thus built a solution. Enter Mailblocks.
The concept is simple. It’s a physical mailbox which [Guy] can put his phone in. All notifications on the phone are blocked unless he puts his phone into the box. When the phone is inside and the box is closed, the little red flag goes up, indicating “DOPAMINE” is available, and [Guy] can check his notifications.
To achieve this, [Guy] is running a custom DNS server. It redirects all the lookups for push notifications on Android so they go nowhere. Placing the phone in the mailbox turns the re-directions off, so the phone can contact the usual servers and get its notifications as normal.
It’s a novel way of fighting against the constant attention suck of modern smartphones. Rather than being bombarded by notifications in real time, [Guy] instead has to take a significant intentional physical action to check the notifications. It cuts the willpower required and the interruptions to his work in a fell swoop.
We’ve featured [Guy’s] innovative and outside-the-box projects before, too. His smart pants were an absolute tour de force, I might add.
I really like the idea (and the mailbox format is adorable!), but I would be very cautious as to /which/ app notifications you do this to. Some social media apps /really/ don’t like being unable to contact the mothership (whether due to airplane mode, DNS blackholing, or just plain being out of cell signal range), and certain ones (namely, the Meta family of apps) will outright /punish/ you for doing so by repeatedly hammering the network interface (even if it’s disabled by airplane mode) until your battery dies.
The solution, of course, and this will also remedy the root issue of notification spam too, is to transition as much social-media usage as possible to only take place in a web browser (sometimes there’s no other option but app-or-gtfo, but in many cases it’s “functional enough” in a mobile browser, and the desktop browser experience is often superior to a desktop app). Biggest boon is, doing this limits how much data a site can slurp from you… close the tab, connection cuts off completely, no background data shenanigans.
> the Meta family of apps) will outright /punish/ you for doing so by repeatedly hammering the network interface
Are you talking about Android? I don’t think such a thing is possible on iOS.
Yeah, on Android. There’s also a rather “interesting” feature (nominally intended for System Apps only, but non-system apps can apply to be added to the allowlist, and Facebook sure as heck did) where notifications will /ignore Do Not Disturb/ and go off anyway… hence airplane mode being my preferred “no notification will wake me except my alarm” nuclear option.
Everyone clowns on iOS for good reason, but have to admit, it IS a fair bit better at enforcing app permissions (and sometimes even /not/ having a certain app capability to begin with, like how all Device Admin/MDM apps on Android intrinsically have the ability to do a remote factory reset, simply by /having/ the Device Admin app permission, while iOS is apparently more granular about what “admin capabilities” an app can request)…