Social media notifications are really annoying especially if you’re running a personal account. Imagine receiving notifications in your Inbox or through SMS every time someone comments, likes, or mentions you on Instagram! Any committed person would not tolerate these notifications.
If you’re however running a business, these notifications aren’t a problem. For businesses, receiving these notifications is a way to communicate with your audience and customers faster.
If you really want to put your life in order, you shouldn’t let social media notifications reach your email or your phone through SMS. Whenever you’re interested in checking out updates, you can simply login to your social media accounts and go through your feed.
We all know how busy Instagram is, people want to upload everything about their lives, starting from how they wake up, to all the meals they have eaten. Imagine receiving updates to your email or through SMS from all your followers.
Your email will be filled so much that you won’t notice important emails sent to you from people that matter a lot or the companies you’re working with. If you prefer to enable email and SMS notifications on Instagram, then it’s better to use a separate email address that is different from work or business.
If you happen to be receiving these annoying emails and SMS notifications on Instagram, we’ll guide you on how to switch them off from your account. You deserve some privacy and Instagram gives users the option to disable all notifications, even within the Instagram app you can disable push notifications.
Why You Should Switch Off Email And SMS Notifications
Get focused
Social media is the biggest distraction for this generation, if you want to focus on something important in your life, you definitely need to switch off email and SMS notifications on Instagram. Not only that, even the app notifications should be switched off. If you’re even looking for distraction-free life, you should consider temporarily deactivating your Instagram account.
When Instagram notifications are turned on, you’ll end up receiving alerts every few minutes and that will always take you off the track you’re working on. Getting focused is one of the major reasons why you want to consider switching off your Instagram email and SMS notifications.
Have a better life
Checking on other people’s lives every hour will definitely affect your health, this is the reason why most Instagram users are into depression. Their eyes are always on their family, friends, and work colleagues.
They always want to compete with them on everything and that’s why they end up with depression or some kind of psychological disorder. If you want to lead a better and happier life, you want to turn off Instagram and other social media notifications.
Avoid checking your phone
There are times when you want to get rid of every gadget around you, the phone is one of the gadgets we can’t get rid of since a lot of things are attached to it. Notifications are one of the things that make you check your phone every minute and this makes you busy while nothing is accomplished.
You’ll end up checking your phone for just a few minutes, but when you add these minutes at the end of the day, you’ll realize that they’re worth a few hours that could have been invested into something important that will improve your life.
These are the major reasons why you want to consider switching off email notifications on Instagram, the main aim of disabling social media notifications is to avoid any form of distraction. You should however understand that there are downsides also, let’s take a look at them also;
The Downsides Of Switching Off Email And SMS Notifications On Instagram
- You will not be available in case of emergencies; If there is an urgent update that needs your attention, you’ll definitely miss it out. But if the SMS notifications are turned on, you’ll be notified instantly.
- People will think you ignore them; Most people don’t like it when they make a post and you don’t like or comment. Your friends and family members will judge you as someone who doesn’t really care.
- If you’re running a business, you’ll lose customers; I would definitely not recommend turning off the email and SMS notification feature if you’re running a business on Instagram or providing some sort of services.
Whatever the disadvantages might be, it’s better to switch off Instagram notifications, this will help you maintain a distraction-free life. Let’s now take a look at how to turn off all Instagram notifications including email and SMS notifications.
How To Turn Off Instagram Notifications
How To Disable All Notifications
If you want to turn off all notifications on Instagram, you can choose to do so. Instead of spending a lot of time disabling notifications individually like posts notifications, story notifications or Email and SMS notifications, you can switch all of them at once. Here are the steps to do so;
- Launch your Instagram app and login.
- Tap on the profile picture which is at the bottom right of your screen.
- You then tap the 3-dot lines located at the top right corner.
- You now tap on the “Settings” option.
- From the list of options available you should locate the option that says “Pause all notifications”, it has a toggle gear that is already turned on and you need to toggle the option so that it’s now off.
- You’ll be presented to select the timeframe you want to pause the notifications.
- You select the preferred range and you’re done, notifications will not be sent for the selected timeframe.
How To Turn Off Email And SMS Notifications
If you now want to customize your notification alerts, you can also do that from your Instagram account. You can decide to turn off notifications for only posts, Stories, and comments, you can select Direct messages, you can select live and IGTV, and also Email and SMS notifications. Here are the steps to do that;
- Open your Instagram app.
- Visit your profile page by clicking on the profile picture just like in the previous step.
- Tap the three-dot lines at the top right corner of your screen.
- Tap on “Settings”.
- From the pause notification option, you should select the notification option you want to turn off. You’ll see these options:
Email and SMS
This is the reason why you landed on this post, that’s looking for a way to disable Email and SMS notifications on Instagram. This is the option you should choose if you’re only interested in switching off Email and SMS notifications from your Instagram account. After turning off this feature you will not receive any post update in your Email inbox or through SMS messages to your phone.
Posts, Stories and Comments
You won’t be notified of posts, stories and comments from other users. Even by turning off this feature you’ve already taken care of all your Instagram notifications since the majority of the notifications are for posts, stories and comments.
Following and Followers
This will shut notifications for accounts you’re following and the accounts following you.
Direct messages
You won’t be receiving any direct messages notification when you turn off this feature. It’s not recommended that you turn off direct message notifications because most of the time the people that send a DM require your response. If you’re receiving unnecessary messages in the DM from marketers or spammers, you should consider blocking or restricting their accounts.
Live and IGTV
Most Instagram users post to Stories, but Live and IGTV are becoming more popular since they allow you to upload longer video content than stories and you’ll find that there are a lot of notifications from Instagram Live and IGTV. When you turn off this option, you will no longer receive notifications from Instagram Live and IGTV.
From Instagram
Instagram does send updates regarding their services, they also send helpful tips regarding the platform. If you turn it off, they won’t send you emails regarding their services. Turning off this option is like unsubscribing to their newsletter. It’s not recommended to choose this option because you’ll miss out on important updates regarding Instagram.
These are the notifications you can turn off on Instagram from your account settings. You can see that all notifications options are right under the “Settings” menu and if you like, you can switch off all notification settings at once.
The next notification you now want to take care of is sound notifications, this can’t be turned off from the app, it’s something you have to adjust from your phone settings. We’ll now share how to turn off sound notifications on Instagram using your phone settings.
How To Turn Off Sound Notifications On Instagram
The Instagram app doesn’t have the provision to customize sound notifications, all you can do is block the notifications from the app. Here is how to control sound settings from your Smartphone;
- Tap your phone settings by clicking on the gear icon when you slide down your screen.
- From the list of setting options displayed, you’ll see the option “Sound”, tap on it to explore sound options.
- Select “Sound settings in applications”.
- You can now disable sound notifications for your apps.
- That’s it, you’re done. And you won’t be bothered with notification sounds for your apps. After switching off sound notifications, you can set the options to vibrate, if you don’t like that as well, you can disable it so that your sounds are completely mute for notifications.
How To Turn Off Other Notifications
Phone Calls
Even phone calls can be annoying unless it’s something critical, there are times when you want to mute everything on your mobile device including phone calls. If you want to turn off phone calls, the best and easy way is to just put your phone “Airplane mode”. Just swipe from the top and select the “Airplane” icon that is available on all mobile devices.
Before doing this you want to make sure that there are other ways your family can contact you in case of emergencies and you should let them know the time when you put your phone Airplane mode.
This can be a big no for some, some modern phones like Samsung allow you to choose the contacts you want to block. This way you can give access to a certain group of people like your family or important business associates.
Email notifications
Just like social media notifications, email notifications can also be annoying and distracting sometimes especially when you have signed up for a lot of newsletters where you’ll end up receiving a lot of marketing messages.
The best way to disable email notifications is by disconnecting your device from the internet. If you’re not connected online, you can’t receive any new message arriving in your main Inbox.
Email providers also have the option for users to turn off notifications using their app. When you take Gmail as an example, you can turn off this feature by opening the Gmail app, sign in to your email account you don’t want to receive the notifications, select notification from the menu options and choose your preferred option, it’s better to choose “High priority only”.
With this option, Gmail will send you notifications received from contacts and the ones you exchange messages with frequently. All promotional emails will be discarded, you can only see them when you open the app and navigate to their folder.
You can also disable notifications for the Gmail app from your phone settings, head over to notification settings, and disable notifications for Gmail. From notifications settings, you can see all apps that have permission to send notifications.
We’ve now reached the end of this post and you’ve seen the benefits of turning off email and SMS notifications on Instagram, and disabling these notifications isn’t a big deal either. You just need to head over to settings and then select the type of notification you want to disable. Thank you for reading and don’t forget to share your thoughts in the comments.