I am drowning in five different chat apps, how do people manage this?

Two habits saved me: turn off notifications for the noisy ones and only check them on a schedule, and put them all in one window so there is a single place to look. I use Spanbox on desktop for that, every app as a tab with one combined unread list, so nothing hides in an app I forgot to open.

The scattered-apps problem is real. A unified inbox app (Spanbox, Beeper) collapses them into one window, which is the single biggest fix. Beyond that, ruthless notification settings so only actual people ping you, not every group and channel.