To be filed under “Yeah AHunter3 is too dense to learn how to use a freaking smartphone”
I needed a few things installed to okay some connections and authentications for desktop software that now requires two-step authentication wherein the secon step must be a freaking cellphone. So I let them walk me through doing so. Then I myself installed a few GPS-flavored packages while trying to make the phone display where my feet are at and which fork in the road I oughta take when I’m out walking.
Something I did somewhere or somewhen has resulted in popup city. I will turn on the phone (a Samsung Galaxy 4 if I recall correctly) and when it loads the screen I swipe and tap the phone button so I can make a phone call, or tap the messages thingie so I can send a text or reply to an earlier one. Before I can so much as pick what I want from the next screen, my display gets stolen by some other app saying I have to ok the use of my microphone or submit a DNA sample or whatever, or an informative popup shows up to let me know that Princess Susie has peed on the royal carpet and it is totally trending or whatever.
Does this mean I infected my phone with malware, or is this normative but annoying behavior I need to learn how to disable or what?
I don’t want any apps I haven’t invoked to pop up and do a damn thing, configure themselves or otherwise. If I want you I’ll go find you, now shaddup. I don’t want my Google calendar to make popups happen on my phone. If I want Google calendar I’ll go there in a web browser from my computer. I don’t want any current trending news to tell me about itself; if I want news I’ll go aim a web browser at the news (and not from my phone, seriously).
Is there some obvious “do A and then do B” set of steps I need to engage in here, or should I instead hie myself to the nearest smartphone store and please utter idiocy and throw myself on their mercy or something?
Go to settings (it may look like a little gear) and scroll down to Notifications. This choose show all apps. From there you should be able to pick and choose which apps have notifications turned on. Generally when you upload a new app the notifications are automatically turned on, just to piss you off.
And sometimes an update counts as a new install, and you have to turn off notifications again. Fortunately you can turn off all updates for one app, even if it tries to trick you into turning them off type by type. (Some apps have many, many different “types” of notification.)
I just awakened it and swiped the screen to go to Settings. Some text-now app wanted me to install it; I’d tell you the name but it disappeared after a moment replaced by a message from Briefing By Flipboard which encourages me to “start reading”. Now a tiny postage-stamp sized movie is playing about Extreme flooding in E stassordshire"
I can’t even find Settings any more! I don’t recall it being difficult to find before… I’ve been in Settings… hang on let me google how to find the freaking settings… oh OK I was looking within Apps, that annoying video was blocking my view of Settings…
Application Notifications. Holy shit there are a lot of apps on here now. OK working on it.
There are lots of notifications and useless stuff on a modern Android phone, it’s annoying but generally configurable. There are even advertisements on Samsung phones, which is ridiculous and unacceptable.
Flipboard is an annoying “feature” that’s included in some Galaxy phones and tablets. There is usually a way to disable it in the home screen settings (available by a long press in the background of the home screen).
Please indicate the real model of your phone, it will help us help you. I haven’t heard of a “Samsung Galaxy 4”. These past few years, Galaxy phones are split into two lineages : A and S. So you may have a Galaxy A4 or a Galaxy S10, etc. The S series is generally higher-performance and more expensive than the A models of the same year.
I disabled notifications for an enormous slew of applications by going to
Apps/Settings/Sound and Notifications/Application Notifications
I’ve received an ad since then for a mousetrap or some such thing. And something called “Peel” is apparently responsible for trying to show me videos. I went to uninstall it and it said “OK so you want to revert to the factory setting?” So I did that and then did a “force quit”.
So I did that and then did a “force quit”.