Exempt an app from 'Mute notifications on phone'

[EmrysTal]

Hello, I have an app (PagerDuty) where I would rather have the sound notification be on the phone instead of the watch because I need it loud and jarring enough to wake me if I get paged while asleep. 

I have PagerDuty unchecked in 'App notifications' but I am not getting sound notifications when my phone is locked. 

I see that 'Mute notifications on phone' is checked and it appears to be muting all notifications on my phone, not just for the apps I have checked to send notifications to my GW6C watch. Is there a way to exempt specific apps from this blanket mute or will I need to leave this unchecked and get sound notifications from both phone and watch?

[realaud]

You might try not allowing that particular app to not send a notification to your watch, while allowing it on your phone. The way I understand it, only apps that you allow notifications for on the watch will be muted on the phone. Everything else will go to the phone.

Another way to do it would be turn the mute notifications on phone off, and then go through your app notifications on phone and either set their notification sounds to "silent" except for the app you want to hear the notification for.  I think the first option would be best.

There is a third option that may or may not work if notifications are muted on the phone, but might be worth a try.  You can create a routine to read the notification aloud when it comes in: if notification received <name app>, then read notification out loud.  There does not appear to be an option in the routine to have the notification sound, unless you count adding it as separate app sound <name app> directed to the phone. Routines can be played with and adjusted to your needs.  They don't tend to work for things you want to control on the watch, though.  But it should work for what you want to do with the phone in this instance, which is to get the notification. I do not know if the routine will override the mute notification on phone setting, but it doesn't cost anything to try.

[EmrysTal]

The first option is how I have it set right now. The description for 'Mute notifications on phone' is "Notifications on your phone will be muted while you're wearing your watch" so it is not affected by the watch notification allow list and will blanket mute all phone notifications while I'm wearing my watch. I confirmed this is the case because I get a silent phone popup notification while wearing the watch and a sound-added phone notification if I take my watch off when I send test alerts to myself. 

The second option is unfeasible to adjust every other app just to accommodate one app. 

Unfortunately I can't try the third option as my Galaxy Note 9 is on OneUI 2.5 (apparently both the phone and the watch needs to be on OneUI 2.6+) so I can't see the Modes and Routines option in the Wearables app. 

Thank you for your suggestions!

[realaud]

Ok.  I have another suggestion.  Since I agree that it is unfeasible to go to each individual app and make the sound "silent", what about if you turn the "mute notifications on phone off" and then go into the sounds and vibration settings on the phone and make the default notification sound "silent".  Then select a sound for the app in question.  This will allow the app sound to play, while all others are silent.  Of course, notifications will still come to the phone, but once you dismiss them on your watch, they will clear from the notification area, so it won't clutter it up with notifications you have already seen.

[EmrysTal · Accepted solution]

Thank you realaud for helping me work through this. I played around with the settings and ended on a mix of changes including what you recently suggested. In the Wearable app I did the following:

1. I disabled Notifications > 'Mute notifications on phone'
2. In Sounds and Vibration I set 'Notification sound' to Silent
3. Also in Sounds and Vibration I set the Notifications volume to the louder end (because the watch's alarm app uses that for how loud the alarms are)

For my situation, I'd rather have sound notifications come from the phone and leave the watch notifications on vibrate and not get double device sound clashing. And by setting the default Notification sound to silent on the watch instead of phone, the forwarded app notifications only are vibrate which means I don't have to adjust any phone notifications and can leave the watch Notification volume level high on the watch for alarms I schedule during daytime. 

I hope in the future they allow exemptions to the blanket 'mute all phone notifications while wearing watch' but this seems like the best compromise that I can find that works for me.

[Robin621k]

You should have marked their solution as resolved too! They put on the right track after all.