Notifications seem great at first, but they usually only end up constantly pulling you away from what you're doing. Nowhere is this more common than with group chats. The more users you have in a group, the more often your phone goes off with another message that you really don't need to open right away.

Thankfully, you have control over these. Let's see how you can shut up WhatsApp and Telegram notifications and regain peace.

How to Silence Notifications in WhatsApp

  1. Open WhatsApp and head to Settings > Notifications.
  2. You can uncheck the Conversation tones box to silence all message sounds. However, this is likely too drastic of a step for most people.
  3. Under the Message notifications and Group notifications headers, you'll see separate entries for the notification tone, vibration, and popup notification options.
  4. If you want to mute group chats but keep notifications for one-on-one messages, tap Notification tone under Group notifications and set None as the sound. This will still show notifications for new messages, but won't make a sound.
  5. To temporarily mute one chat instead, open the chat and tap the three-dot Menu button in the upper-right. Select Mute notifications, and you can silence them for 8 hours, a week, or a year. You can also choose to show the notifications while keeping them muted.

How to Silence Notifications in Telegram

  1. Open Telegram, slide out the left menu, and go to Settings > Notifications and Sounds.
  2. Here, you'll find similar separate sections for Message notifications and Group notifications.
  3. You can disable the notification altogether by disabling the Alert slider. Tap Sound and change it to None to silence notifications for group chats instead.
  4. To mute notifications for a particular chat, tap the three-dot Menu button in the chat and choose Mute notifications. Select to mute them for an hour, 8 hours, 2 days, or until you decide otherwise.

Decided you're totally done with the service? Check out how to deactivate or delete your Telegram account.