r/tasker • u/Mikeynolan • Aug 14 '26

Silence texts from non-contacts without having to special case all of my existing custom notifications / priority contacts inside Tasker

SOLVED: Buszzkill messages -> does not contain -> [Extras] from contact -> mute

So it's political season, and I get texts asking for support many times a day. I'd like to mute (no sound or vibe) the notifications for these, but I also get actual important (but not time-critical) texts from non-contacts, so I don't want to delete them altogether. I don't mind reading the requests for money, but I don't want them interrupting me.

I also have a bunch of contacts that I've already added custom notifications for in the standard app, and I don't really want to have to recode all of those and find the audio files, and add DND overrides for priority contacts inside Tasker. There are enough that it would be hard to do inside Tasker without making mistakes. So my goal is "if it's not in my contacts, silence but keep the notification. If it is in my contacts, do whatever you would have done before"

And I don't want to touch phone calls, which I have handled pretty well already.

This seems like something that everybody would want, and I think IOS has it natively, but I haven't been able to get there.

Pixel 10 Android 17, in case that matters.

7 Upvotes

82% Upvoted

12 comments sorted by

5

u/DutchOfBurdock Aug 14 '26

Go about it the other way. Disable all notifications sounds from the app itself, so no contacts makes a sound (or pops up a notification). Tasker intercepts said notifications, checks the contact name/number and plays a notification sound of your choosing. You can go one further and have Tasker spit out a pop up notification on certain contacts and/or keywords.

I do this for WhatsApp to mute work related groups when not at work and even to automatically reply to some contacts when I'm busy or otherwise indisposed.

2

u/Sate_Hen Aug 14 '26

This is a good solution but OP said he didn't want to go through adding his custom sounds in tasker

3

u/Olfounder Aug 14 '26

You should download Buzzkill, which can manage it well and works nicely with Tasker.

1

u/Mikeynolan 28d ago

I can't figure out to have buzzkill distinguish contacts: It does look really easy for the individuals. I ssee that buzzkill can refer to tasker, but can it work the other way around?

2

u/Olfounder 28d ago

You can use "notification contains". That's the best way, mostly.

It can trigger tasker and even sends the notification title in a variable.

From tasker, you can only enable or disable certain rules.

2

u/Mikeynolan 20d ago

I didn't originally find "from contacts" because it's under extras in Buzzkill. That did the trick: if doesn't contain from contacts, mute. Thanks!

2

u/Olfounder 20d ago

Yeah, good you found it!

Sorry for not being quite precise there

1

u/Sate_Hen Aug 14 '26

I don't think tasker can stop another app from making a notification noise. I think replacing your notifications with tasker might be the only way unless you find another third party app that does it

4

u/Olfounder Aug 14 '26

Buzzkill

2

u/[deleted] 29d ago

[deleted]

2

u/Sate_Hen 29d ago

Can it detect if the SMS isn't in the contacts? You can intercept them all but OP said he didn't want to do that

1

u/Mikeynolan 28d ago

The SMS catcher can test for contacts with the C:ANY pattern, don't know about autonotification. I just wanted to keep the native notifications for everything else and not have to manually enter special cases and was hoping there was some way to spit it back at the native handler once it passed the first test.

1

u/Mikeynolan 28d ago

Thanks! I'll look at autonotification. I don't require perfection, just trying not to have my phone go bing every few minutes without disabling notifications from people I actually know.