NotifSilencer

Stop unwanted "Recommendations" and promotional notifications on Android — including the ones your phone gives you no way to turn off.

NotifSilencer is a lightweight, open-source notification filter for Android. It watches incoming notifications and silently cancels the promotional / "Recommendations" junk while always letting important things (payments, billing, OTP) through. It was built to kill the Honor / Huawei "Recommendations" notifications that have no off switch in system settings — but it works as a general per-app notification filter for anything.

• No internet permission. No servers. No tracking. Your notifications never leave your phone.
• Open source — read exactly what it does.
• Sideloaded (GitHub release APK) — not on the Play Store.

Left: the main screen. Right: tap any intercepted notification to block its channel or app — no typing.

The NotifSilencer icon is inspired by a solar eclipse, symbolizing notifications being quietly obscured rather than removed. Just as the moon temporarily covers the sun, the app intelligently hides or silences selected notifications without interfering with the apps themselves. The glowing orb represents an incoming notification, while the eclipse signifies calm, focus, and control over digital distractions. The dark navy background and teal glow reinforce a modern, premium aesthetic while emphasizing clarity, productivity, and peace of mind.

Some phones — Honor and Huawei especially — push "Recommendations" spam through a system push agent (com.hihonor.android.pushagent) that you cannot disable in notification settings. The word that identifies them isn't even in the visible text; it's hidden in the notification's channel ID (…RECOMMEND…), with a rotating suffix. That's why:

• You can't turn them off in Settings — there's no toggle.
• Most general notification-blocker apps miss them — they match on visible text, not the channel ID, and they get killed by the phone's aggressive battery manager before the next one arrives.

NotifSilencer matches on the channel ID, survives aggressive battery management with a keep-alive service, and is preconfigured to catch these out of the box.

This app reads your notifications, so you should be able to trust it. It's built so you don't have to take anyone's word for it:

• No INTERNET permission is declared. Android's OS blocks all network access for an app without it — so NotifSilencer cannot connect to the internet, send data anywhere, or be reached remotely. This is enforced by the operating system, not a promise.
• No networking code, no analytics, no ad SDKs, no Firebase — none. The source is here; check for yourself.
• Everything stays on-device. Intercepted notification info is stored only in the app's private storage (sandboxed to the app) and never transmitted.
• Works fully offline — put the phone in airplane mode and it still filters.
• WhatsApp is ignored by default, and you can exclude any other app with one tap so it's never even inspected.

The only URL in the entire app is the Ko-fi donation link, which — only if you tap the donate button — opens in your browser. The app itself makes no network connections.

Verify it yourself: decompile the APK and confirm there's no INTERNET permission, or just run it in airplane mode.

• Filters notifications from any app (with a per-app ignore list).
• Allow-first safety: a configurable ALLOW list (payment, receipt, refund, billing, declined, invoice, …) is checked first and always wins — those notifications are never cancelled.
• Block by keyword (recommend, offer, deal, sale, promo, …) matched against the notification text and its channel ID.
• Block by channel ID (substring match, so rotating suffixes don't matter).
• Block by app — cancel everything from a chosen app (ALLOW still protects payments).
• Block by message content — add a word/phrase from a message; any notification containing it is blocked, whatever the app, package, or channel changes to.
• Override list — block wanted-looking messages that aren't yours (e.g. a payment SMS for the number's previous owner) even though they match the payment/OTP allow list.
• Tap-to-block from the log — tap any intercepted notification to block its channel, app, or content, or ignore the app, without typing.
• Search + filters — search the log/blocked history by text, package, or channel; filter the log by Kept/Killed and the block list by rule type.
• Cause highlighting — the exact token that caused each decision is underlined (red for a block, green for an allow), so you can see why at a glance.
• Managed block list — every rule (keyword, override, channel, app) in one list, each removable; plus a collapsible text editor for all lists.
• Tap-to-ignore app picker — pick apps to exclude entirely from a list of your installed apps; no typing package names.
• Export / import settings to a JSON file so your rules survive reinstalls.
• Log-only mode (default on): records what it would cancel without cancelling, so you can watch real notifications before enforcing.
• In-app log of the last 100 intercepted notifications (package, channel, text, verdict) — no adb needed.
• Keep-alive foreground service so aggressive OEM battery managers (Honor/Huawei/Xiaomi) can't silently kill the filter.
• Runtime-editable keyword, channel, and ignore lists — no rebuild needed to tune.
• Biased toward false negatives: when in doubt, it keeps the notification. Missing a promo is far better than losing a payment alert.

1. Ignored package? (e.g. WhatsApp) → skipped entirely: never logged, matched, or cancelled.
2. ALLOW keyword match? (text + channel ID) → KEEP, always. Never cancels a payment/billing notification.
3. BLOCK channel ID match? (substring) → cancel.
4. BLOCK keyword match? (text + channel ID) → cancel.
5. Otherwise → keep.

In log-only mode, steps 3–4 log the decision as WOULD-KILL but don't cancel.

1. Download the latest app-release.apk from the Releases page.
2. On your phone, open the APK. Android will ask to allow installing from this source — enable Install unknown apps for your browser/file manager, then install.
3. Open NotifSilencer and complete the one-time setup below.

No Google account or Play Store needed.

⚠️ Honor / Huawei / Xiaomi (and some others): unrestrict the app first. Some phones automatically restrict a sideloaded app the moment it's installed, which silently blocks it from working — you may even find you can't grant notification access until you lift the restriction. Before the steps below, go to Settings → Apps → NotifSilencer and make sure it is not restricted (look for a "Restricted"/"Restrict app activity" setting, or an app-info banner saying the app is restricted, and turn it off / choose "Don't restrict"). Then continue.

The app's buttons take you to each screen:

1. Open notification access settings → enable NotifSilencer. This is the essential permission — nothing works without it. The status line at the top shows GRANTED / NOT granted.
2. Disable battery optimisation for NotifSilencer → confirm.
3. Honor / Huawei only — protected apps (important): the stock battery exemption isn't enough on these phones. Also do:
   • Settings → Battery → App launch → NotifSilencer → turn off "Manage automatically" → manually enable Auto-launch, Secondary launch, Run in background.
   • Lock the app in the recent-apps view (padlock icon).
4. Grant the notification permission prompt when it appears (for the keep-alive status notification).

You'll see a permanent low-key "NotifSilencer is active" notification — that's the keep-alive that stops the OS killing the filter. Leave it; it's what makes the app reliable.

• Choose apps to ignore — tap apps you never want touched (WhatsApp is already ignored).
• Edit keyword / channel lists — tune ALLOW / BLOCK / channel / ignore lists as wording changes.
• Log-only vs Enforce — leave log-only ON for a few days, watch the log, confirm the junk shows as WOULD-KILL and nothing important does, then turn it off to start actually silencing.
• Intercepted log — the last 100 notifications with verdicts; use Refresh / Clear.

Advanced (optional) — inspect via adb:

adb logcat -s NotifSilencer

Requires JDK 17 and the Android SDK (API 34). Easiest with Android Studio:

1. File ▸ Open this folder. On first sync, Android Studio downloads Gradle and (if missing) regenerates gradle/wrapper/gradle-wrapper.jar.
2. Run ▶ to build and install to a connected phone, or Build ▸ Build APK(s) for a debug APK at app/build/outputs/apk/debug/app-debug.apk.

Command line:

./gradlew assembleDebug        # macOS/Linux
gradlew.bat assembleDebug      # Windows

If Gradle can't find your SDK, add local.properties:

sdk.dir=C:\\Users\\YOU\\AppData\\Local\\Android\\Sdk

Stack: Kotlin · Gradle KTS · minSdk 26 · targetSdk 34 · no Compose · no third-party libraries. Package/applicationId com.notifsilencer.app.

Public APKs must be signed with a stable release keystore you reuse for every update — otherwise updates won't install over older versions.

1. Android Studio: Build ▸ Generate Signed Bundle / APK ▸ APK ▸ Create new… keystore. Back up the .jks and passwords — if lost, you can never update the app for existing users.
2. Build the release variant → app/build/outputs/apk/release/app-release.apk.
3. Attach that APK to a GitHub Release.

The keystore and keystore.properties are gitignored — never commit them.

app/src/main/kotlin/com/notifsilencer/app/
    NotifSilencerService.kt    NotificationListenerService — the core filter
    KeepAliveService.kt     foreground service that keeps the filter alive
    BootReceiver.kt         restarts keep-alive after reboot
    MainActivity.kt         status, log-only toggle, navigation, export/import, donate
    LogActivity.kt          intercepted log as a tappable list
    BlockLogActivity.kt     persistent blocked-only history (tappable)
    ManageBlockActivity.kt  add/remove blocked channels and apps
    IgnoreAppsActivity.kt   tap-to-ignore app picker
    KeywordEditActivity.kt  text editor for ALLOW / BLOCK / channel / ignore lists
    BlockActions.kt         "tap a log entry to block/ignore" dialog
    LogEntryAdapter.kt      list adapter for log rows
    LogRender.kt            shared coloured-verdict formatting
    Prefs.kt                SharedPreferences config, defaults, export/import
    LogStore.kt             persisted ring buffer of the last 100 interceptions
    BlockLog.kt             persistent block-decision history (500)
app/src/main/res/…          layouts, strings, theme, adaptive launcher icon

NotifSilencer is free and open source. If it saved your sanity, you can chip in:

☕ ko-fi.com/moersebene

• A notification listener can only cancel notifications it sees, the moment they're posted — on some OEMs you may see a brief flash before it's removed.
• It can't rewrite an app's notification channels; it cancels matching notifications instead.
• After a reboot, open the app once to be sure the listener is reconnected (some OEMs delay re-binding).
• Off-Play means no auto-update — grab new APKs from Releases.

NotifSilencer is free software licensed under the GNU General Public License v3.0 — see LICENSE. You may use, study, share, and modify it, but any distributed derivative must also be open source under the GPLv3 (no closed-source or ad-supported repackaging).

Copyright © 2026 chantleyw and contributors.

Most of this app's code was generated by Claude (Anthropic) under my direction. I did the on-device debugging and testing, drove the problem-solving (e.g. finding that the Honor "Recommendations" identifier lives in the notification's channel ID), and made all the design, product, and release decisions — but I did not hand-write most of the code.

The app is built and tested on Honor (Magic UI). It should work on other Huawei/Honor devices and Android 8.0+ generally, but behaviour on hardware I haven't tested may vary. Use at your own discretion; it's provided as-is under the GPLv3, with no warranty.