Android have been praised time and time again for the way that they handle notifications. With the latest release, Android O, users will have even more control on what they choose to receive by allowing apps to create group alerts in ‘notification channels’.
Here’s an example. If you had a news app downloaded onto your Android device, you can now customise this to only show you notifications regarding science, for instance. This is similar to the sorting that Google has on Gmail, which allows control over the type of email a user will be notified for. Android O will extend this filtering to any developer making it easier for users to control when their phone reacts.
There will also be an option to snooze notifications with Android O, making them appear at a later time. Apps will continue to update notifications while snoozed and users will have the option to make notifications time out after a certain time so they will dismiss themselves. There’s good news for app developers, too. Google is now allowing them to set background colours for notifications which could be useful for users to distinguish between the news they receive.
As it stands, Android Nougat, which was released in August 2016, has only reached about 3% of Android phones. Android O will go through a number of different versions before its official launch, something we don’t yet know the exact date of.