The speaker, and the pinging
Get a device talking to something you own, and decide for yourself what a machine is allowed to interrupt you for — with nobody standing over you telling you where either switch is.
This course has said the same thing about everything in the house with a screen on it: it is a computer in a different shape, the settings belong to you rather than to whoever made it, and nothing you change is permanent.
Here is a practice machine carrying two of the commonest complaints in the country at once. Neither of them is a fault, and neither of them needs anybody clever. There are no instructions this time.
Key points
- Switch on the thing that lets a speaker, a pair of headphones or a hearing aid talk to a device at all.
- Decide what a machine may interrupt you for, instead of putting up with whatever it came set to.
- Tell a notification that matters from one an app switched on for its own reasons.
What to remember
- Bluetooth is the same switch on every phone, tablet, computer and car radio there is: it goes on first, and only then will anything appear in a list to be paired with. When something refuses to appear, it is nearly always because its own small light is not flashing yet. And every notification on everything you own was switched on by an app rather than by you — they can all be turned down, one at a time or the whole lot at once, and nothing whatever is lost when you do. The messages sit quietly inside their apps, waiting until you go and look.
- Honestly — how was that?
Try this
Open the notifications on your own phone and read down the last ten. Count how many of them you would have asked for. That number is the whole argument for changing it.
Practice: The speaker, and the pinging. Your first lesson is free, with no account or card; the rest are part of a Lantern plan. Interactive lessons require JavaScript.