I just set group chat notifications to silent.

I still get a notification that's easy to spot in the tray/bar, but it doesn't play sound or vibrate, so it's not distracting unless I'm already looking at the screen.

If you're on Android, BuzzKill can set your notifications to "cool down", so if you get multiple within a short time, you will only get buzzed again once a set amount of time has passed.

I bet you use an iPhone, right?

I think that's a good idea, my solution is to mute group chats and check them when I'm free, but it's not ideal for the reasons you've mentioned.

In whatsapp there's only the option to mute the chat.

In discord there's granular level of control that allows me to mute everything but direct notifications (@d00ery).

But if you implemented such a feature, how would you limit it?

i.e. one notification for the first message and then mute all replies for 5 mins? What happens when that one person who always replies an hour later messages?

Could we use AI to check if the conversation is still related to the original message?

From a dev perspective there's all sorts of solutions but I wonder how would one find the sweet spot.

Although it might feel like it's really important to stay on top of messages outside of those concentrating times, it really is not. Set your own terms for when to read messages and silence your app altogether.

"But what if I miss out on...?"

Don't let fomo control you. It will awkward at first wanting to check constantly, but you'll find that in reality you don't miss much if you check once or twice a day.

I feel like it already works that way... I'll get 1 notification a day, despite there being constant banter going on in the chat even though I want it to notify me of every individual message.

I wouldn't even be surprised if it just works in the opposite way you want it to on purpose.

It was years ago, so my memory might not be perfect, but I had something that kinda did that. I think it was an Xposed module called GravityBox, and there was an option to limit repeat notifications. I had set a cool down period of probably 1 minute, meaning if I received multiple messages within 60 seconds, it would only notify once, but if I received another message 60+ seconds after the first, it would ding again. I'm pretty sure that the cool down period was customizable per app too. Damn, I miss that.

if you use Android, you can use Macrodroid to play the notification sound and show its own notification when this app shows a new notification, but with the condition there Macrodroids notification isn't there yet. Then you make the apps notifications silent. This way it will only play the sound once until you close the one from Macrodroid.

Do Not Disturb is the default mode on my phone, unless I expect to be present.

If you’re on iOS setting up profiles would work. I have work, driving, and do not disturb. Each one allowing/blocking specific notifications

It should be mostly possible with ntfy, except everything would have to use it, and most apps just use one of the centralized push notification services.

I have a mildly smart home, and the server sends a push notification via ntfy. I have one of those mobile automaton tools on my phone that plays an mp3 when it sees that kind of notification. Then I have audio notifications turned off in the ntfy app my phone. With sufficiently advanced rules, I think you could set up something like you suggest; if not, a custom app could do it - one notification, and then there rest are silent until you dismiss it.

It's not a complete solution (unless you use Matrix, which can be configured to send notifications via ntfy), but my point is there's little technically preventing a solution being hacked together with existing tools. Except for those apps that only use Google or Apples push notification systems. Which is most of them.

Perhaps try Alertify.

In my case I use Voice Notify which reads out the messages. Giving the phone a shake shuts it up.