Android comes with built-in emergency alerts, that send notifications for potential safety threats and new AMBER alerts posted nearby. While this can definitely be useful to a certain extent, these alerts will make your phone ring loudly even if it’s set to silent.
Also, most of these alerts are not for what you’d actually call an emergency situation. More often than not, they represent severe weather warnings.Since Android’s built-in notification system is not the only way to get emergency alerts, and it has the annoying habit of ringing at completely unexpected times (such as in the middle of the night or during an important meeting) it’s definitely a good idea to dive into the Settings and either customize these notifications or even disable them completely.
Since Android’s built-in notification system is not the only way to get emergency alerts, and it has the annoying habit of ringing at completely unexpected times (such as in the middle of the night or during an important meeting) it’s definitely a good idea to dive into the Settings and either customize these notifications or even disable them completely.
Disable all emergency alerts
If you don’t want to receive any kind of emergency alert, you can disable all of them from Android’s Settings app. Open it and tap on ‘More..‘, then navigate to ‘Emergency broadcasts‘. Here, toggle off the ‘Turn on notifications‘ option.
Disable specific emergency alerts
The ‘Emergency broadcasts‘ menu found under Settings -> ‘More…’ offers a number of customization options, which can be very useful if you still want to receive the emergency alerts which are actually important.
Navigate to ‘Emergency broadcasts‘ following the steps above and you can disable alerts by type. The menu offers the ability to toggle off the ‘Show AMBER alerts’ option, so you won’t be notified every time someone goes missing in your area.
There are two more options you can toggle off, that will ensure you don’t get alerts for extreme and severe threats, but since these are actually very important, we suggest you keep them on or, at least, disable only the ‘Show severe threats’ option since the other one, ‘Show extreme threats‘, sends notifications for the most serious emergency situations.
Note: The Settings menu might be different on your Android device, depending on the model and manufacturer. On some Android devices, the ‘Cell Broadcast settings‘ screen is found under Settings  -> ‘Wireless & Networks‘ while on others you’re going to find them in the Settings menu of the Messaging app. Some Samsung Galaxy phones and other models have a dedicated Emergency Alerts app.
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