Notification management is one of the areas where Android excels, to the point where many believe Google’s operating system handles notifications better than Apple’s iOS. However, there is still a lot that Android can learn from iOS to improve its handling of notifications. Time will tell whether Google wants to learn from Apple, but for now, it looks like the Mountain View tech firm is borrowing from one of its popular services to fix Android’s chaotic notification panel.
In December last year, we reported that Google is working on a new notification feature called “Notification bundling” in Android 16. The purpose of this is to silence and group similar notifications to reduce clutter. We haven’t seen it working on Android 16 yet, but it looks like the company is getting close to releasing it, as more details about the highly anticipated feature have emerged.
What new do we know about Google’s notification plans for Android 16?
As spotted by Android Authority‘s Mishaal Rahman, a renowned Android expert, Google’s Notification bundling has been changed to “notification organizer” in the Android 16 16 QPR1 Beta 2 release. However, the feature still does exactly what we previously reported: like Gmail, it automatically sorts each notification into any of the four categories, including Promotions, News, Social, and Recommendations.
It’s not just the name that Google changed. The company is now more categorical about how it’s managed to do it. As revealed by the Android expert, the feature description now says that it’s powered by AI and may contain errors. While the feature isn’t activated in the latest Android 16 release, folks over at Android Authority have managed to bring the feature’s settings page on a Pixel 8 Pro running Android 16 QPR1 Beta 2.
The settings page has revealed that it’ll allow users to select what apps they don’t want to be grouped or categorized. So, if you want to exempt, let’s say, WhatsApp from this rule, you will be able to do that from the settings. The ability to opt out also helps when it repeatedly miscategorizes alerts from specific apps.
When is this coming, and will it be available for all 16 devices?
Android Authority speculates that we might see this feature in the first quarterly release of Android 16. But it isn’t all good news, as it might not work on all Android 16 devices. This is because, as pointed out by Rahman, the AI service that it’s using to declutter Android’s notifications is part of the Notification Assistant service, which is a proprietary Google feature. However, we still can’t rule out the possibility of Google finding ways to activate it on all Android 16 phones. We’re hopeful.
