Being notified when something happens is part of the dream of smart home tech. Who wouldn’t want to know if the dishwasher or dryer cycle is done without having to go check? But unfortunately, the reality doesn’t quite live up to the promise.
We already suffer from notification overload
You know what I don’t want my phone to do more often throughout the day? Chime with yet another notification. Yet, in hindsight, that’s the obvious result of incorporating devices into my life that hold the promise of notifying me when they complete their tasks.
When I swipe down from the top of the screen, I no longer see just my text messages or incoming email. I also see Samsung SmartThings (I use SmartThings to manage my Matter devices) informing me that I can unlock my smart lock using my phone or that I’ve saved however many kilowatts from using its energy saving features. I get notified when my fridge needs a new filter. Likewise, I’m informed that my robot vacuum is stuck, yet again, in the same spot where it got tangled up last time.
In short, I’ve injected more notifications into my life.
I ignore most notifications, in general
Do I take action on any of these notifications? More often than not, I don’t even read them. I swipe them away as soon as they appear, or I let them grow in a group until I swipe them all away at once. I've set most of them to be silent and appear in the background. So, when I see a SmartThings notification, I recognize the icon as one I’m safe to ignore. Or I see the robot vacuum app pop up, and I know it’s something I just don’t want to deal with right now.
This isn’t just the way I treat smart home notifications. In fact, I have most notifications disabled. I don’t want most apps to be able to ping me. I can check them manually when I’m ready. Smart home notifications are no exception.
I haven’t disabled smart home notifications yet, but I might as well. If a pop-up isn’t a loved one trying to get hold of me, then there’s a good chance the ping can wait—or rather, chances are I wish I weren’t even pinged at all!
Some notifications are simply excessive
I recently bought an adapter that allows my existing Wi-Fi smart locks to integrate with my smart home via Matter (the kind of thing you don't need if you buy one of the best smart locks with Matter already baked in). Since doing so, I’ve started receiving notifications several times an hour that my lock is now offline or that it has successfully reconnected. On one hand, it’s useful information to know that my connection isn’t rock solid.
On the other hand, the lock works whenever I press the button, so maybe the connection is fine after all? I have yet to work this out, but in the meantime, this is an issue that falls in the realm of system administration, and I do not need my phone blowing up all day informing me that there is a device in my home that doesn’t have the strongest Wi-Fi signal. Do you know how many devices are in my home? Get in line.
The solution here is simple—turn off notifications! This is not an unsolvable problem, to be sure. I write this merely to inform those of you who are less far along in your smart home journey that, contrary to the advertisements or what your own impulse might tell you, receiving notifications really isn’t the perk that it’s promised to be. A home that can notify you of every little thing is a phone or smartwatch that’s chiming nonstop.
That said, I don’t regret my purchases, including the roughly 50 smart switches I've installed around my house. While it’s not great to get pinged the moment something happens, it’s lovely to be able to remotely check from my phone whenever I actively think about it. I like opening my smart home app and seeing whether the lights are off at the other end of the house, or the doors are locked, or that the temperature on the thermostat has changed. Remote access is great. Notifications? Not so much.
