Thanks to the latest Snapchat update, you can press “Do Not Disturb” to temporarily mute incoming messages from your friends. Better yet, the feature allows you to do it incognito, without having to unfriend the person or come off as rude.
As TechCrunch reports, Snapchat rolled out “Do Not Disturb” without fanfare — the perfect approach for a feature that’s all about saving us from notification overload.
As Inverse notes, the new feature can help you escape the “oversaturated notification zone,” and “foster better communication between people (the ostensible goal of apps like Snapchat) instead of just constant communication.”
This isn’t Snapchat’s first effort to make its platform more humane. Last November, a platform redesign separated publisher content from what your friends are posting. Snapchat co-founder Evan Spiegel said the redesign was meant to separate the “social from the media” and to “guard against fake news and mindless scrambles for friends or unworthy distractions.”
Snapchat’s latest update arrives as the global movement around creating more humane technology is gaining momentum. Recently, Arianna Huffington sat down with Samsung Electronics America CMO Marc Mathieu, CNN reporter Laurie Segall, and actor, environmentalist and entrepreneur Adrian Grenier to discuss how technology can make us more human, not less. Additionally, prominent voices like Bill Gates and Marc Cuban have urged us to redefine our relationship with our devices.
Read more about the update here.