How To Stop Substack Notifications From Pummeling Your Inbox

Just a few clicks can save your day and your SANITY!

For the record, this image is my version of hell.

I’m holding

Chris Stanton

solely responsible for this week’s post. The moment I saw the following note, I paused and silently sat here in solidarity:

This week, I’m here to help save your sanity, one toggle switch at a time.

It’s worth noting that

Jennie O'Connor

wrote (and illustrated in full color) about the same topic this week, which only adds to our solidarity wagon. So, here we go.

Did you know?

You can stop all newsletters from arriving in your inbox WITHOUT having to unsubscribe and feel like a jerk, and you won’t miss out on anything because the Substack app has you covered.

Here’s how to implement this sorcery.

You can do it under your profile settings (not your dashboard settings). Here’s a screenshot of where to find the magic in your profile settings.

The proper order of steps circled in red is:

1. Click your profile icon first (top right),

2. then settings in the dropdown,

3. then scroll until you see notification options. There are MANY options for you to toggle off but the “Newsletter delivery” option at the top is what you want.

If you select ‘Prefer Push’ it will turn off email deliveries and only notify you of new posts via the app. POOF…no more newsletters littering your inbox but you still stay subscribed to them.

If you want to go an extra sanity-saving step, turn off everything and live calmly ever after.

I have stopped receiving all newsletters in my inbox. Aside from being willingly subscribed to 75+ Substacks, I’m also auto-subscribed to roughly 40+ more, simply because I work with them. As an admin, I automatically receive every mailout and every performance notification for every publication I work with.

Here are the notification types I’ve chosen to turn OFF:

• New free subscribers - because then it’s like Christmas each time I look at my stats.

• All unsubscribes - nobody needs that kind of negativity in their lives. 😁

• Comment likes - some of my posts have over 400 likes. I can’t handle 400 emails.

• Recommended content - I can’t even keep up with the ones I willingly chose.

• New followers, new chats, new notes.

Having said that…

If you’re new on Substack and don’t have a lot of action just yet, by all means, leave all notifications ON! It’s a super exciting way to measure progress. However, once you get up in the 1000+ range of subscribers, trust me, your inbox will need an exorcism and you might have to reevaluate your settings.

My hope for you is that one day you WILL reach the esteemed level of needing to turn your notifications off.

What are your thoughts? Now that you know, will you be banishing emails from your inbox or do you enjoy the thrill of the onslaught?

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