Google’s take on Apple’s Live Activities is set to go live with full functionality with Android 16’s first quarterly release.
Expected to roll out sometime in September, the QPR1 update will bring dynamic and progressive notifications that let you track activities in real time via your Pixel’s lock screen and status bar. Activities can include the likes of food delivery tracking, alerts and timers, ride-hailing app pickup, navigation, and more. Unfortunately, though, it looks like the new notification class won’t play nice with your favorite music players.
For reference, music players already get elevated permissions when it comes to screen real estate. Controls show up under the Quick Settings menu when you swipe down, alongside a prominent ‘widget’ on the lock screen and Always on Display (AOD). There is, however, no status bar chip that you can quickly tap to access controls or get track information at a glance.
Android 16’s new dynamic notification class could have solved this, but, alas, it won’t. This is primarily because music and other media apps don’t utilize a new notification template — one that is crucial for a notification to be elevated to the Live Update status.
There’s a template dilemma
As highlighted by credible Android analyst Mishaal Rahman in an Android Authority report, for a notification to be elevated to the Live Update status, it needs to:
- Be marked as an ongoing activity.
- Include a short summary to be displayed in the status bar chip.
- Declare the POST_PROMOTED_NOTIFICATIONS permission.
- Call the requestPromotedOngoing API to elevate it to a Live Update.
- Use the Progress-style notification template.
Music/audio streaming apps can fulfill all of those requirements, barring the crucial Progress-style notification template. Said apps already use a dedicated Media-style template to gain elevated media playback notifications. This allows their notifications to be pinned to the Quick Settings panel, lock screen and AOD.
Migrating to the Progress-style template would let media players retain their position on the lock and AOD, paired with a new status bar chip. However, that would come at the cost of losing their prominent placement under the Quick Settings panel. This is a trade-off that media apps are very unlikely to make.
Whether Google ends up making adjustments to let multiple notification template styles be classified as Live Updates remains to be seen.
