Hide heads up notifications

Mute actions in BuzzKill can prevent notifications from vibrating or making a sound but it cannot automatically hide the heads up notification. However with some setup on your computer you can allow BuzzKill to hide heads up notifications.

Step 1: Enable developer options

This is different depending on your device but can usually be found by going into the Android settings app, going into the About section and tapping the Build Number 7 seven times. If you’re using a Xiaomi device you’ll need to tap MIUI version instead.

Step 2: Enable USB debugging

Once you’ve enabled developer options you’ll need to head into the new developer options settings page and enable USB debugging If you’re using a Huawei device you’ll also need to enable “USB debugging (Security settings)”. The developer options can be found in “additional settings” on Huawei devices. If you’re using a Realme device you may need to check “disable permission monitoring”.

Step 3: Connect your device to your computer via USB

Find the USB cable that came with your device and connect your phone to your computer. Once plugged in you should get a popup on your phone asking if you want to allow the connection with the computer, accept it.

Step 4: Run command

If you’re using a Mac

Open Spotlight and type “Terminal” to launch the Terminal. Then copy and paste the following into the Terminal and press enter:

curl -s https://dl.google.com/android/repository/platform-tools_r30.0.0-darwin.zip -o buzzkill_adb.zip && unzip -qq -o buzzkill_adb.zip && ./platform-tools/adb shell pm grant com.samruston.buzzkill android.permission.WRITE_SECURE_SETTINGS && echo "Successfully granted permission" ; rm buzzkill_adb.zip && rm -r platform-tools

If it worked you should see “Successfully granted permission”. If it didn’t then you should see an error indicating what went wrong.

If you’re using Windows

Open the Windows search menu and type “Command Prompt” to launch it. Then copy and paste the following into Command Prompt and press enter:

curl -L https://dl.google.com/android/repository/platform-tools_r30.0.0-windows.zip -o platform.zip && ^
powershell -Command "Expand-Archive 'platform.zip' '.'" && ^
cd platform-tools && ^
adb.exe shell pm grant com.samruston.buzzkill android.permission.WRITE_SECURE_SETTINGS && ^
adb.exe kill-server && ^
cd .. && ^
del platform.zip && ^
rmdir /Q /S platform-tools

If it worked you shouldn’t see any errors. If you see anything show up after running the command then something went wrong.

If you’re using Linux

Open the terminal app and copy and paste the following, then press enter:

curl -s https://dl.google.com/android/repository/platform-tools_r30.0.0-linux.zip -o buzzkill_adb.zip && unzip -qq -o buzzkill_adb.zip && ./platform-tools/adb shell pm grant com.samruston.buzzkill android.permission.WRITE_SECURE_SETTINGS && echo "Successfully granted permission" ; rm buzzkill_adb.zip && rm -r platform-tools

If it worked you should see “Successfully granted permission”. If it didn’t then you should see an error indicating what went wrong.

What does the command do?

The command does a few steps in order to simplify the process. Firstly it downloads the necessary tools to connect to your device from Google (by running this command you accept Google’s license agreement here https://developer.android.com/studio/releases/platform-tools). It then uses a tool to grant BuzzKill with the WRITE_SECURE_SETTINGS permission. This is a special permission in Android which is why you need to use a computer to grant it. BuzzKill just uses this to enable & disable heads up notifications when required. It’s completely optional and BuzzKill will function without it (though won’t be able to hide heads up notifications).

What do I do if it didn’t work?

Please email [email protected] and I’ll help you through the setup if you’re having problems.