If you're anything like me, your phone buzzes all day long, alerting you to completely useless things like app updates, Facebook likes, and chain emails from your grandma. Here's how to keep your phone from bugging you all day without turning your notifications off entirely—but still staying on top of what matters.

We've all experienced phantom vibrations before—that feeling that your phone is ringing when it really isn't. Psychology professor Larry Rosen says this could be a symptom of tech anxiety, and it's probably true—we've gotten to the point where every time our phone buzzes, we feel like we need to pull it out to see what just happened, even if we're so often disappointed by email newsletters, Facebook likes, and other notifications that aren't "need to know". This is annoying, but there's no need to turn off notifications altogether—all it takes is a little pruning.

The process is a little different depending on whether you have an iPhone or Android device, but there's a lot you can do on both platforms to keep annoyances to a minimum while staying on top of what's really important. It takes a bit of setup, but you'll be much happier for it in the end. Here's what you need to do.

Step One: Split Up Apps By Importance

Before we get into the settings, you should take a look at the apps on your device and decide which ones you really want to stay on top of. Generally, I split notifications up into three categories:

• Important: These are the apps I always want to buzz me when something happens. Vibrations, sounds, badges on the home screen, the whole nine yards. SMS usually falls into this category, though it can also include personal or work email, calendar alerts, and to-do apps (like the iPhone's Reminders app).
• Unimportant: These are notifications that I like to have, but I don't want bugging me during the day. If I go to check my phone during a free moment, I like to see them, but I don't want them to vibrate or make noise. This often includes things like Facebook, Twitter, and IMs.
• Useless: These are apps for whom I want to just turn off notifications entirely. If I want to see what they have to tell me, I'll open them up. I don't want them wasting space in my notification center, let alone vibrating in my pocket. That means you, podcast managers, games, and other random apps.

You may find that you have other categories or sub-categories, but this is a good skeleton on which to base your system. Next, it's time to delve into the settings.

Step Two: Tweak Your Notification Settings for Each App

With those categories in mind, we'll now come up with a system for which notification settings we'll apply to each category of apps. Here's how to do it on both the iPhone and Android.

On the iPhone

Head into Settings > Notifications and go into each app one by one. Here are the settings you'll probably want to use for each category:

• Important: I turn everything on for important notifications. The Notification Center, badge app icons, sounds, and the lock screen. I usually stick with banners instead of alerts, but you can tweak this based on your own preferences.
• Unimportant: Unimportant notifications should probably use the same settings as important notifications, minus sounds. That means these notifications will show banners when you're using your phone, they'll show up in the notification center and on the lock screen, and they'll show badges, they just won't bug you with sounds or vibrations when you get notifications.
• Useless: For these, you can go ahead and just turn everything off and set the Alert Style to "none". That should keep the app from ever bugging you or taking up notification space.

Note that the "Sounds" slider in the notification center means sounds and vibrations—there's no way to separate your preferences for each in iOS. If you have sound notifications, you'll get vibrations as long as you have vibrations turned on in Settings > Sounds.

On Android

Android apps manage their notification settings separately from one another. So, to tweak the notification settings for a certain app, open it up, press the menu button, and go to Settings. Search around for the notification settings and tweak them from there (some of them are hard to find, too—Gmail's is hidden in each individual account's settings under "Labels to Notify", for example). Here are some guidelines for what you'll want to set:

• Important: I turn everything on for important notifications. I want them to show up in my status bar, make a sound, and vibrate. These are important notifications and I want to know about them as they happen.
• Unimportant: For these apps, I'll often turn notifications on, but turn vibrations off. I'll leave sounds on, usually, unless I get a ton of notifications from the app (like Twitter), in which case I'll turn sounds off as well.
• Useless: For these, you can go ahead and just turn notifications off entirely.

Note that every app has different notification settings—some will have more than described above, and some will have less. You just have to make do with what you have. For example, if you don't have the option to keep sounds on and vibration off, you're probably better off turning them both off for unimportant notifications.

Step Three: Give Each App Its Own Notification Sound

If you really want to make your life easy, you can give each app its own notification tone. That way, when you get a notification, you know exactly what kind of alert it is without even looking at your device. Here's how to do it.

On iPhone

You can tweak the built-in apps' sounds right from Settings > Sounds. This includes new SMS messages, new voicemails, new emails, tweets, calendar alerts, and reminder alerts. Just tap on a category and choose from one of iOS' many tones. You can also create your own tones using iTunes and sync them to your device—as long as they're shorter than 15 seconds, you can assign them to any of these categories as well.

Unfortunately, you need to do a little more work to assign custom tones to non-Apple apps. We've discussed how to do this before, so we won't go into it here—just know that it's a little more work, and since a lot of apps come with their own separate tones anyway, it isn't always worth the trouble. For third party apps that just use Apple's default tri-tone sound, the only way to customize them is to jailbreak your phone and use an app like previously mentioned PushTone, which is a great way to customize your sounds all from one place.

On Android

To assign a notification tone, go back to the notification settings of each app. Within the notification settings, you can tap "Ringtone" (or something similar) to assign a tone from Android's vast library. Don't forget you can also add custom tones to Android by copying short MP3 files to the /media/audio/notifications folder on your SD card (if it isn't there, you can create it). After copying them there, they should show up in the list of possible tones in each app's notification settings.

Other Tweaks to Further Customize Your Notifications

If you really want to go the extra mile, there are a few extra tweaks you can make to make your notifications as unobtrusive to your life as possible. Here are some cool tricks for iOS and Android.

On the iPhone

The iPhone has a cool feature that lets you use custom vibration patterns for each of your contacts, so that when they call, you can tell who it is without even taking your phone out of your pocket. To set them up, just go to Settings > General > Accessibility > Custom Vibrations. Turn it on, and then go into the Contacts app. By editing a contact, you can give them a vibration pattern of your choosing (or even create a new one). Sadly, this only works for calls—not SMS or other notifications—but it's still handy if you get a lot of phone calls from friends and colleagues.

If you're jailbroken, we also like this handy little tweak called Reveal, which makes your notifications scrollable on the lock screen. That way, you can see an entire notification—whether it be a text message, email summary, or something else—without having to unlock your phone. It's simple, but can often save you from having to open up your phone, wait for your inbox to load, and read the message if there's something else you'd rather have your attention on.

On Android

If you want to really get the most out of notifications on Android, you have to check out previously mentioned WhoIsIt, which lets you assign custom ringtones and vibration patterns to all of your contacts. Essentially, you can give each contact a different ringtone and vibration pattern for calls, Gmail, SMS, and MMS, which means you'll always know exactly what that notification is for without taking your phone out of your pocket. It'll definitely take awhile to set up, but once you get all of your contacts customized, you'll be completely on top of every buzz your phone makes.

Update: A lot of you are noting in the comments that WhoIsIt no longer works on many phones, in which case we recommend checking out previously mentioned ViBe. It doesn't do quite as much, but will still let you customize vibration patterns for calls and text messages.

We also like previously mentioned Notifier Pro for Android. It gives you iOS-like banner notifications across the top of your screen that are much easier to read than Android's defaults, which mean it's easier to see whether a specific notification is something you need to open up right now. You can also set it to re-send you unread notifications after a few minutes, which is great if you're the type of person that doesn't always feel your phone vibrating in your pocket (say, if you keep it in your backpack or purse).

This is just the beginning of everything you can do—we could do a whole feature on customizing just your email notifications if we wanted to—but you should find that your phone is much less annoying after putting some of these ideas in place. Got any other cool apps or tweaks for controlling your notifications? Let us know about them in the comments.

If you're anything like me, your phone buzzes all day long, alerting you to completely useless things like app updates, Facebook likes, and chain emails from your grandma. Here's how to keep your phone from bugging you all day without turning your notifications off entirely—but still staying on top of what matters.

We've all experienced phantom vibrations before—that feeling that your phone is ringing when it really isn't. Psychology professor Larry Rosen says this could be a symptom of tech anxiety, and it's probably true—we've gotten to the point where every time our phone buzzes, we feel like we need to pull it out to see what just happened, even if we're so often disappointed by email newsletters, Facebook likes, and other notifications that aren't "need to know". This is annoying, but there's no need to turn off notifications altogether—all it takes is a little pruning.

The process is a little different depending on whether you have an iPhone or Android device, but there's a lot you can do on both platforms to keep annoyances to a minimum while staying on top of what's really important. It takes a bit of setup, but you'll be much happier for it in the end. Here's what you need to do.

Step One: Split Up Apps By Importance

Before we get into the settings, you should take a look at the apps on your device and decide which ones you really want to stay on top of. Generally, I split notifications up into three categories:

• Important: These are the apps I always want to buzz me when something happens. Vibrations, sounds, badges on the home screen, the whole nine yards. SMS usually falls into this category, though it can also include personal or work email, calendar alerts, and to-do apps (like the iPhone's Reminders app).
• Unimportant: These are notifications that I like to have, but I don't want bugging me during the day. If I go to check my phone during a free moment, I like to see them, but I don't want them to vibrate or make noise. This often includes things like Facebook, Twitter, and IMs.
• Useless: These are apps for whom I want to just turn off notifications entirely. If I want to see what they have to tell me, I'll open them up. I don't want them wasting space in my notification center, let alone vibrating in my pocket. That means you, podcast managers, games, and other random apps.

You may find that you have other categories or sub-categories, but this is a good skeleton on which to base your system. Next, it's time to delve into the settings.

Step Two: Tweak Your Notification Settings for Each App

With those categories in mind, we'll now come up with a system for which notification settings we'll apply to each category of apps. Here's how to do it on both the iPhone and Android.

On the iPhone

Head into Settings > Notifications and go into each app one by one. Here are the settings you'll probably want to use for each category:

• Important: I turn everything on for important notifications. The Notification Center, badge app icons, sounds, and the lock screen. I usually stick with banners instead of alerts, but you can tweak this based on your own preferences.
• Unimportant: Unimportant notifications should probably use the same settings as important notifications, minus sounds. That means these notifications will show banners when you're using your phone, they'll show up in the notification center and on the lock screen, and they'll show badges, they just won't bug you with sounds or vibrations when you get notifications.
• Useless: For these, you can go ahead and just turn everything off and set the Alert Style to "none". That should keep the app from ever bugging you or taking up notification space.

Note that the "Sounds" slider in the notification center means sounds and vibrations—there's no way to separate your preferences for each in iOS. If you have sound notifications, you'll get vibrations as long as you have vibrations turned on in Settings > Sounds.

On Android

Android apps manage their notification settings separately from one another. So, to tweak the notification settings for a certain app, open it up, press the menu button, and go to Settings. Search around for the notification settings and tweak them from there (some of them are hard to find, too—Gmail's is hidden in each individual account's settings under "Labels to Notify", for example). Here are some guidelines for what you'll want to set:

• Important: I turn everything on for important notifications. I want them to show up in my status bar, make a sound, and vibrate. These are important notifications and I want to know about them as they happen.
• Unimportant: For these apps, I'll often turn notifications on, but turn vibrations off. I'll leave sounds on, usually, unless I get a ton of notifications from the app (like Twitter), in which case I'll turn sounds off as well.
• Useless: For these, you can go ahead and just turn notifications off entirely.

Note that every app has different notification settings—some will have more than described above, and some will have less. You just have to make do with what you have. For example, if you don't have the option to keep sounds on and vibration off, you're probably better off turning them both off for unimportant notifications.

Step Three: Give Each App Its Own Notification Sound

If you really want to make your life easy, you can give each app its own notification tone. That way, when you get a notification, you know exactly what kind of alert it is without even looking at your device. Here's how to do it.

On iPhone

You can tweak the built-in apps' sounds right from Settings > Sounds. This includes new SMS messages, new voicemails, new emails, tweets, calendar alerts, and reminder alerts. Just tap on a category and choose from one of iOS' many tones. You can also create your own tones using iTunes and sync them to your device—as long as they're shorter than 15 seconds, you can assign them to any of these categories as well.

Unfortunately, you need to do a little more work to assign custom tones to non-Apple apps. We've discussed how to do this before, so we won't go into it here—just know that it's a little more work, and since a lot of apps come with their own separate tones anyway, it isn't always worth the trouble. For third party apps that just use Apple's default tri-tone sound, the only way to customize them is to jailbreak your phone and use an app like previously mentioned PushTone, which is a great way to customize your sounds all from one place.

On Android

To assign a notification tone, go back to the notification settings of each app. Within the notification settings, you can tap "Ringtone" (or something similar) to assign a tone from Android's vast library. Don't forget you can also add custom tones to Android by copying short MP3 files to the /media/audio/notifications folder on your SD card (if it isn't there, you can create it). After copying them there, they should show up in the list of possible tones in each app's notification settings.

Other Tweaks to Further Customize Your Notifications

If you really want to go the extra mile, there are a few extra tweaks you can make to make your notifications as unobtrusive to your life as possible. Here are some cool tricks for iOS and Android.

On the iPhone

The iPhone has a cool feature that lets you use custom vibration patterns for each of your contacts, so that when they call, you can tell who it is without even taking your phone out of your pocket. To set them up, just go to Settings > General > Accessibility > Custom Vibrations. Turn it on, and then go into the Contacts app. By editing a contact, you can give them a vibration pattern of your choosing (or even create a new one). Sadly, this only works for calls—not SMS or other notifications—but it's still handy if you get a lot of phone calls from friends and colleagues.

If you're jailbroken, we also like this handy little tweak called Reveal, which makes your notifications scrollable on the lock screen. That way, you can see an entire notification—whether it be a text message, email summary, or something else—without having to unlock your phone. It's simple, but can often save you from having to open up your phone, wait for your inbox to load, and read the message if there's something else you'd rather have your attention on.

On Android

If you want to really get the most out of notifications on Android, you have to check out previously mentioned WhoIsIt, which lets you assign custom ringtones and vibration patterns to all of your contacts. Essentially, you can give each contact a different ringtone and vibration pattern for calls, Gmail, SMS, and MMS, which means you'll always know exactly what that notification is for without taking your phone out of your pocket. It'll definitely take awhile to set up, but once you get all of your contacts customized, you'll be completely on top of every buzz your phone makes.

Update: A lot of you are noting in the comments that WhoIsIt no longer works on many phones, in which case we recommend checking out previously mentioned ViBe. It doesn't do quite as much, but will still let you customize vibration patterns for calls and text messages.

We also like previously mentioned Notifier Pro for Android. It gives you iOS-like banner notifications across the top of your screen that are much easier to read than Android's defaults, which mean it's easier to see whether a specific notification is something you need to open up right now. You can also set it to re-send you unread notifications after a few minutes, which is great if you're the type of person that doesn't always feel your phone vibrating in your pocket (say, if you keep it in your backpack or purse).

This is just the beginning of everything you can do—we could do a whole feature on customizing just your email notifications if we wanted to—but you should find that your phone is much less annoying after putting some of these ideas in place. Got any other cool apps or tweaks for controlling your notifications? Let us know about them in the comments.

Dear Lifehacker,
I hate small talk. I never know how in-depth I should go into a conversation and I'm just not that into talking about the weather. With the long weekend coming up and lots of social obligations, I'm wondering, how can I turn all that small talk into an actual conversation?

Sincerely,
Big Talk

Dear BT,
Nobody really likes small talk and it's certainly one of the more boring tasks we all go through. While a lot of small talk is based only on the fact you're standing next to someone and have to say something, the real goal is to find a common ground to spark up a conversation. Let's look at a few things you can do to get that conversation rolling a little quicker.

Share Small Details Until One Idea Sticks

We've mentioned how sharing small details during small talk is a really good way to gauge interest in a subject and start up a real conversation. Instead of responding to a simple question like, "How's it going?" with "Good, you?" expand your reply with a details about your day. For instance, you might say, "Good, I spent the morning kayaking and I'm feeling great!"

When you share that little piece of your story you'll get one of two responses: a question about how it was or a disinterested, "Oh cool." If they reciprocate your excitement you have an in and can continue the conversation. If they don't seem interested try revealing another detail until something sticks. Photo by David Goehring.

Learn to Ask Relevant Questions

We're all hard-wired to share information about ourselves, but in order to get to a point where you're having a real conversation, it's important to show interest in another person first. As Psychology Today points out you can do this in any number of ways. Start by listening correctly:

Too often when we're meeting someone new, we try to fill the dead moments with chatter about ourselves. Far better for you to listen first, talk second. Of course, someone has to start the conversation, but if you and your companion actually listen to each other and not worry about what to say next, things will flow more naturally.

Once you have a good idea of what's going on you can use that information to ask the right kinds of questions. Asking questions is a great way to turn small talk into a conversation naturally. Just make sure your question is relevant to the topic at hand and not a way to turn the conversation back to you. Photo by Clarkston SCAMP.

Arm Yourself with Relevant Topics

People love to talk about the news, and it's an easy way to step up boring bits of small talk and turn it into a fun conversation. Walking in with a few topic ideas in mind is a good way to direct a conversation. The Art of Manliness has a simple formula for coming up with topics:

If you don't know the people you will be conversing with, think about the things that will probably interest those you meet. Ask them about the unique aspects of their locale ("I saw an interesting statue in the way into town. What's the story behind it?"), read up on the company they work for ("I hear you will be expanding into China soon—when will that be happening?) and ask those who do know the others better for some background information.

The idea is that if you can find a few bits of relevant information you can take an otherwise boring small talk conversation and direct it toward something more interesting. Photo by John Verive.

Respond to "What Do You Do (For a Living/For Fun)?" with Something You Actually Did

One of the most common conversation starters is "so, what do you do?" It's meant as a quick way to gauge the ways a person might be interesting. Depending on your job this might be an easy response, but for many of us it's a little more complicated.

In my own experience, I've found that most of my jobs require more than a one or two word answer because I've had very few jobs in my life where the job title explains what I do. Instead of responding to "What do you do for a living?" by saying I'm a writer for Lifehacker, I'll usually expand it by adding a few notes about what I wrote about that week or talk about an experience. Basically, instead of responding with where you work and your official position, come up with a story that exemplifies what you do for a living.

The same goes for the "What do you do for fun?" question. Don't just say, "Oh, I usually go hiking" (or whatever). Talk about a recent experience with your hobby, like, "This past weekend I went up the mountain and had a picnic with my sister. We saw a bear chasing a mountain goat."

The basic idea running through all of these suggestions is to find the hook in the small talk and pull it out so you're both on common ground. To find it you have to pay attention to subtle cues, listen to how they reply, share a good amount of info about yourself, and learn to gauge when they're interested.

Sincerely,
Lifehacker

P.S. Have your own tricks for turning small talk into something more meaningful? Share it in the comments.

Have a question or suggestion for Ask Lifehacker? Send it to tips+asklh@lifehacker.com.

Title image remixed from Dvarg (Shutterstock) and Everett Collection (Shutterstock).

Getting new Facebook notifications is always fun, but that red number gets a lot more annoying when your notifications are just filled with apps you don't want and comment threads you no longer care about. Today, Facebook added new controls to the notification dropdown so you can unsubscribe from certain threads and apps right away.

Let's say your friend just got a big promotion, and you comment on their status to congratulate them. Then, after that, 50 of their other friends do the same, and you get a notification for every damn one of them. Previously, you'd have to head to that thread and click "Unfollow Post" to stop the notifications. Now, you can just click the "x" in the upper right-corner of the notification itslef—quick, easy, and painless. This also works for events, photos, annoying apps you never signed up for, and other things Facebook might notify you of.

Most of these changes should roll out quickly, so you should see them by the end of the day. The app notification controls are a bit more complicated, though, so we should see those in the near future. Hit the link to read more.

Facebook Keeps Shipping. Now You Can Silence Spammy Apps and More with New Notification Controls | TechCrunch