Limits of LeetCode Notification Toggles: No Per‑Difficulty Filtering

The direct answer

There is no hidden setting, undocumented preference, or public API that lets you filter LeetCode's "New Problem Release" notifications by difficulty. The toggle is binary: on means you get alerted for every new problem (Easy, Medium, and Hard alike), off means you get none. The mobile push switch is even coarser — it silences all app alerts regardless of category. As of this writing, LeetCode has not published a roadmap committing to granular notification preferences, so treat any claim about "upcoming filters" as unverified.

Confirmed vs. likely

Confirmed by inspection: the Notifications settings page exposes per-category toggles only, with no difficulty, tag, or frequency rules. Notification preferences are global per category.

Likely explanation, not confirmed: LeetCode's notification pipeline appears designed around broadcast events (a problem is published → all opted-in users are notified) rather than per-user query evaluation. Adding difficulty filters would require per-user rule evaluation at send time, which is a real architectural change — a plausible reason it hasn't shipped, but this is inference, not a statement from LeetCode.

What you can do without risking your account

The safe workarounds all share one property: they use data LeetCode already exposes publicly, without scraping behind login or hammering endpoints.

1. Use the public GraphQL problem query manually. LeetCode's own frontend loads problem metadata (including difficulty) via its GraphQL endpoint. Occasional manual queries in your browser are indistinguishable from normal site use. Automated polling of this endpoint is the gray area — see the caution below.
2. RSS/feed readers and community aggregators. Several community-run trackers and Discord/Reddit bots announce new problems with difficulty labels. These shift the polling burden (and the ToS risk) to the aggregator, though you should be aware those services face the same constraints.
3. Filter client-side after the fact. If you keep the binary toggle on, you can route LeetCode's notification emails through your mail provider's rules (e.g., Gmail filters on subject lines) to deprioritize or archive them, then check a community difficulty listing before deciding to click. This is fully ToS-safe since it touches only your own inbox.
4. Request the feature. LeetCode's feedback channel and feature-request threads in the forum are the only legitimate lever for getting granular toggles on the roadmap.

What to avoid

Scripts that poll LeetCode's internal APIs on a schedule, browser extensions that auto-refresh problem lists, or any automation that runs while authenticated can be flagged as bot activity. LeetCode's Terms of Service restrict automated access, and accounts have been suspended for scraping patterns. A cron job hitting the GraphQL endpoint every few minutes is exactly the kind of traffic that gets detected. If you automate anything, keep it infrequent, unauthenticated, and cache-friendly — and accept that this is still a judgment call, not a guarantee.

How to verify the current state yourself

Settings change without announcement, so check before assuming this answer is current:

1. Open Settings → Notifications and confirm whether any difficulty or tag options have appeared next to "New Problem Release."
2. Check the official LeetCode help center and recent forum announcements for notification-related updates.
3. If you build any workaround, test it against a single manual request first and watch for rate-limit or auth errors before running it repeatedly.

Bottom line: no native per-difficulty filtering exists, no public API supports it, and the only policy-safe options today are inbox-level filtering, community aggregators, and requesting the feature. Anything involving automated polling of LeetCode's own endpoints carries account risk and should be treated accordingly.