HACKER Q&A
📣 kajolshah_bt

Why do users mute apps instead of deleting them?


Users don’t delete immediately. They mute notifications first.

By the time deletion happens, it’s weeks later.

For people building mobile products: – What usually triggers the mute? – Is it notification volume, relevance, timing… or something else? – Have you found reliable signals before this happens?

Genuinely curious what others have seen.

  👤 treetalker Accepted Answer ✓
Speaking as a user, and offering my own preferences / process FWIW:

My goal is to simplify and have as few apps as possible. If I download a new app, it's always on probation. It needs to reduce my cognitive load, save my time, make my life appreciably better. If it doesn't, or if the juice isn't worth the squeeze, I delete it.

Regardless, I immediately default to no notifications. Don't ask me to turn on notifications: I'm not an idiot, so I figure the app has some notification mechanism if I want it; and I figure I can activate it in a place called Settings; so I'll handle it myself if I decide to later, thanks. The insult to my intelligence just wasted seconds of my life and limited attention and mental bandwidth, none of which I'll ever get back — so, strike 1!

I prefer to poll. If polling is not enough, I'll set up scheduled notifications. If that's not enough (maybe the app is Messages or one that alerts me that my house is burning or my children have been kidnapped — who knows!) then I'll turn on notifications. But even on Messages — perhaps the only app I want to hear go ding — I mute notifications for a lot of contacts/threads.

So if the app isn't helpful; or stops being helpful; or becomes a burden, through annoying notifications or otherwise — sayonara.

👤 Nextgrid
Muting notifications and deleting do not have to be correlated (unless you send something offensive enough to prompt someone to delete immediately).

Muting notifications means "I don't need this thing to interrupt me". Deleting means "I don't need to use this thing ever".

Those are very different and separate things - I have plenty of apps that I use regularly and yet they do not have notifications enabled because there would be no value from that.

👤 JohnFen
> Users don’t delete immediately. They mute notifications first.

Almost all app notifications are worthless noise. Unless I know I need notifications from an app (which is rare), I mute notifications on install. If I've forgotten, then first time an app gives me one. This happens whether I'll ultimately delete the app in the end or not.