Send notifications to Android phone without mirroring to Samsung Galaxy watch

Mobile Apps Home Assistant Companion for Android
1

I have HA Companion Mobile App on my Pixel 9a and the HA wear os app on my Samsung Galaxy 5 watch.

I can send notifications to my phone using: notify.mobile_app_pixel_9a
And similarly to my watch using: notify.mobile_app_galaxy_watch5_pro_5dbb

I would like to separate and distinguish notifications that I send to my phone vs. my watch.
For example, I like to send urgent notifications to my watch so I can hear/feel the notification immediately even if my phone is not nearby.
Conversely, I like to send less urgent notifications to my phone that I can look at less frequently.

The problem is that when my phone’s display is off, all HA notifications sent to my phone via notify.mobile_app_pixel_9a are mirrored to my watch.

Note that notifications sent to my watch via notify.mobile_app_galaxy_watch5_pro_5dbb are not mirrored to my phone (so this behavior is asymmetric).

So how can I send notifications to my phone that do not get mirrored to my watch???

2

I’m assuming this is some device setting, either phone setting or watch setting.
I doubt you can fix this in HA

3

No there is not phone or watch setting apparently as the Samsung wearable app seems to blindly mirror notifications. I was hoping maybe there was a HA workaround.

4

Hmm…

What does off mean here?
If you send a notify to the phone that turns on the screen will a second message while the screen is on not be mirrored?

Or sending:

action: notify.mobile_app_pixel_9a
data:
  message: command_screen_on
  data:
    ttl: 0
    priority: high
    importance: high

then the second message.

5

If my screen is off on my phone (i.e., it either times out or I do a quick press on the power button), then notifications that are sent to the phone (via notify.mobile_app_pixel_9a) get mirrored to the watch – presumably by the Samsung Wearable app on the phone.

I assume the (rigid) thinking is that if your phone is off so you are not seeing the notification real-time on your phone then obviously you want it sent to your watch so that you see it.
If the notification is set to ‘silent’ in Android then it doesn’t get mirrored, presumably because Samsung has determined that the user must obviously think that silent notifications are not important enough to mirror.

This is Samsung trying to be like Apple in rigidly assuming that there is only one right way to do things and that everybody must be thinking the same way…

It may be that this is a Samsung issue and there is no HA workaround…

6

Can’t you use a silent notification channel then?

7

Silent channel is probably the best bet - though you lose sound on your phone of course…