Ward

This is an accessibility feature. My deaf friend uses it because he can’t hear the chimes and wants to know about notifications even if his phone is on the desk. That being said, it would be super distracting in a meeting.

Either you need to expose those two services to the Internet or use a VPN. You mention vpns are inconvenient but have you checked out tailscale? The free account does your needs and it’s by far the easiest one I have set up. You can also look into a cloudflare tunnel but you would need a domain name for that

I’ve posted here in the past week or two more than I posted on Reddit in the past 11 years. I think it’s the smaller more engaged community that encourages me to do it. Comments don’t just get lost in a sea of jokes and grammar bots.