Android 15 introduces new functionalities for the efficient management of notifications

Android, one of the most popular operating systems for mobile devices, has won over the years the appreciation of users due to the intuitive way of organizing notifications. Grouping them according to the application of origin considerably facilitated the reading of a large volume of notifications received simultaneously.

According to recent information published by Android Authority, the upcoming Android 15 version will bring a new functionality designed to further optimize the notification management process. This will allow the categories of notifications not used by an application to be hidden, thus reducing the unnecessary clutter of the interface.

Notification categories – a peculiarity of the Android system

Introduced with the release of Android 8.0 in 2017, notification categories allow applications to divide their notifications into different sections, depending on their type and relevance. For example, the Facebook application uses distinct categories for reminders, friend updates, friend requests, birthdays, groups and more. This segmentation allows a clearer view of the notifications within the smartphone.

However, the number of categories that an application can create is substantial, reaching up to 5000. This aspect can become overwhelming and even ineffective for users. As a result, Google decided to disable in Android 15 the categories that were never used by a certain application.

Android 15 will hide unused notification categories

Mishaal Rahman, a journalist at Android Authority, noted that this improvement hid 22 categories created by the Instagram application on his personal smartphone. To reactivate them, the user must access the notification settings and select the “show unused categories” option.

Although this functionality is not completely new in the tech industry, Samsung has already implemented in the One UI 6.1 interface the possibility to disable certain categories of notifications, it is appreciated that Google decided to integrate it natively in the next Android version.

Currently available only in the beta 1 version of Android 15, it remains to be seen if this improvement will be included in the final version of the operating system. Certainly, such an optimization will bring real benefits to users, streamlining the way they interact with notifications on their mobile devices.