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Your Afternoon of Alerts

A Filled-Out Bracket, a Long Report and Eleven Buzzes

An app can send several kinds of alerts and buzz for every one of them, when only one kind was wanted.1 This is one of those afternoons, in Diego’s office.

  • ESPN keeps its own alert switches under Edit Alerts, which opens from the gear at the top right of the app’s home screen. Breaking News has one, and each favorite team has alert options of its own.1
  • ESPN’s alerts also need the phone’s own Settings to allow ESPN to send them.1
  • Google News keeps its own notification settings under Alerts in News settings: a switch next to each type of notification, and a Number of notifications choice from Low to High.2
Diego at his desk reading a printed report, a computer monitor beside him and his phone lying face up on the desk

Diego reads a report on Thursday afternoon

Diego filled out a bracket in ESPN last week, for the office pool. Now it is Thursday afternoon, the first games of the basketball tournament are on, and he has a long report to finish before a meeting at four. His phone lies face up by the keyboard. It buzzes: ESPN, with breaking news from a game he is not watching.

Diego holding the report and looking down at his phone as it buzzes on the desk, a monitor and a cup beside him

Diego loses his place in the report

Then Google News buzzes, with a headline about another game. He looks down, and when he looks back he has lost the paragraph. Finding it again takes four minutes. By three o’clock the two apps have buzzed eleven times between them, and he is on page four.

Diego smiling at his desk while Vikram leans in beside him, the report in his hand

Vikram stops by on the way to the meeting

At four, Vikram leans on the desk and asks how Diego’s bracket is doing. Diego has had eleven alerts and cannot say which of them touched it. He opens ESPN to find out, then picks up the half-read report, slides the phone into a drawer and follows Vikram out.

By three in the afternoon

Diego had taken the buzzing as part of having ESPN and Google News on his phone, every alert or none. He had no idea each app kept its own list of which kinds of alerts it sends, in ESPN under Edit Alerts and in Google News under Alerts in its News settings.

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TrueTo goes into each app and changes the setting the way you would. Every one of them is reversible, one at a time.

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Diego reads a report on Thursday afternoon

If Diego had used TrueTo, it would have gone into ESPN and Google News, turned off Breaking News in ESPN and set Number of notifications to Low in Google News for him.

Diego loses his place in the report

With Number of notifications at Low and only the types he chose left on in Google News, the headline would have waited inside the app, and he would still have been on his paragraph.

Vikram stops by on the way to the meeting

When the tournament was over, Breaking News would have been his to turn on again in ESPN, with everything else left as it was.

Alerts

In ESPN, under Edit Alerts, which opens from the gear at the top right of the home screen, Diego can turn off Breaking News himself and choose the alerts for each favorite team.1 In Google News, under News settings, then Alerts and Notifications, he can set Number of notifications to Low and turn off each type of notification he does not want.2

Sources

  1. ESPN, “How do I sign up for Alerts?” ESPN Fan Support, October 22, 2019.
  2. Google, “Manage your Google News notifications,” Google News Help, read October 12, 2026.