Notification permissions are usually asked for badly. The app appears for the first time, and before the user has read a single message it shows the operating system's permission dialog. If they say no, the prompt is gone for good and the app quietly decides that notifications are not for this person. If they say yes, the app now has a blank cheque for message alerts, calls, reminder emails, and whatever marketing is invented next.

We shipped the opposite last week in Folcadi, a language-exchange messenger with a Flutter client. After login, once, the app shows its own preference sheet with four channels. Every switch starts off.…