It’s widely agreed that Android’s notification system is more flexible than what’s offered on iOS. Unlike Apple users, those on Android can fine-tune alerts down to specific notification categories for each app or even interact with them directly without opening the app itself. Despite already having the upper hand, a recent report suggests that Google is looking to further enhance Android’s notification capabilities.
This information comes from Android Authority, which unearthed several lines of code in Android 17 Beta 3. According to the publication, the search giant refers to this feature as “Notification Rules”.
Based on these lines of code, rules can be created for specific apps and contacts. After creating a rule, users can set a relevant action, which includes “Silence”, “Block”, “Silence & Bundle”, “Highlight”, and “Highlight & Alert”. Some of these rules are fairly self-explanatory, with a few already existing in one form or another. Others are aimed at reducing notification overload from certain apps and conversations, while simultaneously surfacing more important alerts so users don’t miss them.
As mentioned earlier, these rules can also be applied to specific contacts. This could potentially allow users to silence calls and suppress notification pop-ups entirely, without having to block the caller.
That said, it may not be exclusive to Pixel smartphones. According to Android Authority, the same code strings were also found in a leaked Samsung One UI 9 build.
Google has yet to confirm the feature for Android 17, so there’s a chance it may only arrive in a future version. As with most early reports, the details are still fresh, so we’ll need to wait a little longer to fully understand the feature’s scope.
(Source: Android Authority)
