In my line of work*, time is money, and seconds count. While working, I have been keeping my phone in my pocket in silent mode when I’m working. After missing several assignment offers equaling hundreds of dollars of work, I decided something must be done. I had already set up my device preferences to vibrate with notifications, but that obviously wasn’t enough. I decided to look into my Gmail, Email, and Messages apps to see if I could set notifications on a per app basis, and found out I could. Here’s how.
In Gmail, tap Menu, then More, then Settings. Scroll all the way down to Vibrate. The default is Never. Tap the down arrow to change this. Select Only in Silent Mode or, to be safe, For all Gmail notifications.
In Email, tap Menu, then Account settings, and scroll down to Vibrate. Here’s where it can trip you up, because it is different from Gmail. In Gmail, what you see is what you get; i.e., if you see For all Gmail notifications, that’s when it will vibrate. In Email, it will say “Also vibrate when email arrives,” but that’s not what you get unless you select it. As with Gmail, the default is Never. To change this, tap the down arrow and select either Always or Only in Silent Mode. I select Always to be safe. Note that you will have to repeat this process for every one of your Email accounts.
In Messaging, follow the same directions as for Email. As always, the default is Never. Why Google would make never the default for all these messaging apps I cannot understand, especially when the wording is misleading in the settings for Email and Messaging. What’s even more misleading is that the messaging apps settings do not honor the system settings for the device itself. I had already set device settings to Vibrate: Always. So why should Always not apply to messages? Pretty stupid, if you ask me.
So, now you know how to make sure your Android device vibrate when new messages come in. I’m happy to give free advice as a netizen who has benefited from other bloggers, but I’m also happy to donate to bloggers when their helpful hints save me a lot of dough. If this blog post saves you money, please consider donating to my blog by clicking the PayPal Donate button. Thanks! 🙂
*I work as a freelance interpreter for the deaf, and the agents I work for send out mass emails whenever they need to fill requests. In this age of email, when every interpreter I know carries a mobile device with them, I can respond to a request in 60 seconds and the agency will tell me it was already filled by another interpreter who responded in 30 seconds. It’s not always that fast, but when I don’t even realize I got an email from an agency until 20 to 30 minutes after the fact, it does me no good to have a mobile device. That’s why it’s so business-critical that I be notified the moment an assignment offer goes out.
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Daniel Greene 
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