Copy post — Tela Network

Turn off red notification badges on phone app icons
StJohn Piano
11 July 2026
Post #145
http://tela.network/forum/145/

Small but significant change to interacting with a phone:

I discovered today that it's possible to prevent the phone app icons (e.g. the icon for Whatsapp) from showing a little red badge with the number of unread messages in the top-right corner.

Android interface, translated from Spanish:

Settings / Notifications / App Icon Badges on the Home Screen
-> "Don't show"

The small "number of unread messages" badge is an _alert_, and psychologically registers as a potential problem of unknown magnitude, interrupting whatever your train of thought was before you saw it.

Alerts should be reserved for something that really is critical, not a new message in a whatsapp chat group.

It's important in this era to limit (as much as feasible) the ability of an interface to capture your attention, and thus the number of interruptions / day.

Interruptions increase stress and break concentration.

The strategy today is to preserve your ability to concentrate.