Overview
Permly is an Android notification manager that lets you selectively silence apps per profile — without reconfiguring settings every time, and without handing over notification content to anyone.
The premise is simple: most people want fine-grained control over which apps can interrupt them depending on context. Work hours, evenings out, focused work. DND is a blunt instrument. Per-app settings require reconfiguration every time. Permly fits between those two options.
The idea surfaced in January 2026. Before writing a line of code, the concept was validated directly: describing it to coworkers and acquaintances — “silence your work apps so you stop getting notifications after 6pm” — produced consistent, immediate interest across different use cases and demographics. Two months later, the app was live. The problem was real. It just wasn’t solved well.
Challenge
The technical surface was smaller than expected — Android’s NotificationListenerService is well-documented, and dismissing a notification before it surfaces is straightforward when you’re not processing its content.
The harder problems were architectural and product-level:
Permissions minimisation. BIND_NOTIFICATION_LISTENER_SERVICE technically grants access to notification content — messages, subject lines, metadata. Building a product users could trust with that access meant making content-reading structurally impossible, not just promised. The app operates on package identifiers only and never touches the notification payload.
Scope discipline. As a primarily backend developer, resisting the impulse to build everything upfront was the real UX challenge. The goal was a shippable core, then iteration driven by real user behaviour — not by anticipated feature requests.
Honest monetisation. The notification manager category is full of apps carrying hidden costs: ads, analytics SDKs, excessive permissions. Building a genuine alternative meant treating the no-ads, no-data-collection commitment as an architectural constraint, not a marketing claim.
Solution
Permly organises notification control around profiles — named sets of apps to silence. Switch profiles with one tap from the quick settings tile, or let scheduling handle it automatically on Pro.
- Profile model — define states once (Work, Focus, Personal) and switch context with a single tap. Different situations require different blocking sets; profiles make that composable rather than requiring per-app reconfiguration each time.
- Content-blind architecture — notifications are intercepted at the package level and dismissed before surfacing. No notification text, sender, or metadata is read, stored, or transmitted. All data stays on-device.
- Distraction statistics — local tracking of blocked notifications per app surfaces the actual volume of interruptions being filtered. Free tier: 7-day history. Pro: full history.
- Scheduling (Pro) — automatic profile activation and deactivation on a time schedule, so context switching happens without a manual tap.
- No third-party SDKs — Kotlin, Jetpack Compose, Material Design 3. Nothing beyond the Android platform itself.
Outcome
- ~6,000 downloads in the weeks since launch; ~2,000 MAU
- Monetisation model validated — Pro tier live across monthly and lifetime options; early adopters converting organically; Google Ads spend yielding minimal ROI so far
- Privacy architecture validated in practice — the content-blind design was noticed and named positively by users unprompted, confirming it as a genuine differentiator rather than a marketing talking point
- Primary roadmap signal from user feedback: snooze mode — temporary, timed notification blocking without a full profile switch — alongside whitelist mode