The reason for Android's Notification system being better than iOS, is solely due to the ability to turn off individual aspects of an application's notifications.
The reason for Android's Notification system being better than iOS, is solely due to the ability to turn off individual aspects of an application's notifications.
Google, the poor multi-billion dollar scrappy startup that maintains Android, made a payment app that has one notification setting, "Google Pay". So all the ads, promotions, everything.
3rd party apps like PhonePe & Paytm have a better system.
Let's be honest though: Android's notification system has been better than iOS's since long before this feature was added. I'd still take Android 7's notifications over iOS's.
Though to be fair, my experience with iOS notifications in recent versions is on iPad, not iPhone. So it might be better than I think nowadays
They’ve added a couple of channels, “Critical” and “Time Sensitive”, with some options for allowing overrides of focus modes for those channels specifically.
I also like the option for “mute notifications for 1hour /till end of day” I use it frequently when a group chat blows up and I’m not in the mood, or notifications about my server that I’m just not going to deal with rn.
This thread prompted me to look into the Wallet notification settings. There was a setting where Google could send you notifications. I just turned those off. I don't want them, but I also can't remember ever getting one.
I don't really understand what the controversy is about. If an app abuses its notifications permissions to send me spam, I disable it. The post is right, granular notification settings in Android are great. I carry both android and iOS around every day and iOS notifications just kind of build up and periodically get cleared all at once. Too much noise in there. The android notifications are things I actually care about and want to be notified about in a timely fashion.
This kind of promotion. Sure, it's not a frequent issue, but you're telling me you (Google) maintain an OS where everyone has to follow the rules for a certain way, except you? I call bullshit.
Can also confirm I do not get ads/promotions from Google Wallet, and Google Pay isn't an app anymore, so maybe you should make sure you have a legit version. I only get the you just paid notifications, which I would want to get.
Can you show an example of the notifications you're getting?
Not solely for that reason. The notifications are rich, you can reply from the notification and the notification icons in the top bar tell you what's going on without even opening the shade
Google, the poor multi-billion dollar scrappy startup that maintains Android, made a payment app that has one notification setting, "Google Pay". So all the ads, promotions, everything.
Amazon is another poor startup that does that on their Android app.
Best part is when they're shit and don't categorize / separate out their notifications into categories I just turn notifications off. If companies want to play by the rules and have properly segmented notifications I'm happy to let some of them through, else they're all getting disabled
AliExpress is one of the worst offenders. If you want "useful" notifications (like order updates) you have to put up with their ads and deals bs. I turn them all off.
It is dev dependent, but I don't agree with "devs can implement it just as easily" at all. One only requires using a built-in API to create notification channels (which you have to call anyway), the other requires designing and programming your own page for it.
I always scratch my head at people griping about too many notifications. When I install an app, if it doesn't immediately ask for the ability to send them, I proactively disable them. And if it does, I deny the. Mobile games are the worst about it, for sure I only allow badges for some apps, and even fewer get real notifications, and still fewer can break trough Focus Mode.
iOS "could" allow more granularity, but in reality, spammy apps have a solution (disable them), and apps that want to send both "real" notifications and spam/ads/marketing indiscriminately have another (uninstall or yell at the company that made it by way of lousy app store reviews).
For Android, having apps ask for permission for notifications is a very new feature (debut in Android 13 I think) so by default apps notifications were collectively permitted. It would be up to the user to explicitly go in and disable notifications after the fact. I think many people either didn't know how to access the notification settings or just didn't care enough to disable them.
Also they're just visually bad. The bubbles have way too much spacing. The low-contrast blurry bubbles make everything feel cluttered. When expanding a group, you'll see the same app icon repeated 20 times, while the headlines are clipped. The typography doesn't feel right: headlines are too large, text styles on individual notifications are too similar and the line heights are too small. The scheduled summary was a nice idea, but again it's blurred background on blurred backgrounds. And if all of that wasn't cluttered enough, let's make everything overlap at bottom.
Apple is usually really good at this, I don't know what this particular design team was smoking.
I would too but gotta get these "good morning" and "celebrate the day of lightly salted cucumbers" pictures/post cards from my grandparents somehow haha
Some channels are dynamic, so theoretically it could be a calls channel for each different person calling.
That said I feel like I have seen an issue similar to yours for many different apps which use dynamic channels so I think this is due to poor coding and not malicious behaviour.
Good point about dynamic channels (even though it sounds bad if you consider the notification channel's purpose) but not true in that particular case: I've talked to a bunch of people using Viber and it still has only one active "call" channel
Probably bad coding - should create notification channel when there's no existing one atm somehow. Probably disabling notification channel also triggers recreation
And in contrast to iOS there's eg. AutoNotification. So even with some very bad and intrusive apps, like my App tracking me driving and giving discounts if I'm good, that don't allow such fine settings and refuse to work without all notifications on, you can just block specific ones. In my case it's things like status information, reminders etc.
Android notifications are definitely nice. I just hope they eventually get the focus functions from iOS. I know Samsung already has it but still would be nice to have a built-in version
@soulfirethewolf I would actually love that.
The focus mode feature is the closest I've gotten to actually enjoying something similar. But it's barely anything.
@hiramfromthechi I'm not entirely sure... I remembered seeing something like that in the Developer options menu, but there isn't anything there...
If you're on Android 12, you do get to add a Camera and Microphone Quick Setting (QS) tile in the notification shade. You were already able to control the Location and NFC sensors through here...
Edit the QS layout and look for the Camera and Mic tile. They let you turn off the Camera and Mic access for apps. Same for the Location and NFC tiles.
Is it possible in older version ? Since I'm rooted I can block then but I believe it wasn't possible before.
I had an app in android 8 I think that did that without root access, but it doesn't work anymore in android 10.
I'm talking about notifications like low battery, do not disturb, keyboard open, connected to a vpn ...
You do realize Google Pay is not maintained by the same set of people who maintain android. The 1 notification option is pathetic, but you get what you get. The android apps are not maintained, so they fit and follow all of android's guidelines. If they were. You would be seeing material you theming in most of them where applicable.
Then a jerk like Samsung comes along and disables disabling notifications for most of their apps, disables the ability to uninstall their crappy store and other useless emoji apps, periodically installs malware like temp and tiktok and scammy games, and resets all of their app permissions and notifications with every OS update.
Doesn't the fact that it says "All Paytem Notifications" supercede the individual selections though? I figured that's how companies were getting around the individual toggles, you either take them all, or you reject them and they'll pester you to enable them literally every time you open the app.
Awesome! Thanks for that. Now maybe I can turn push notifications back on for Uber Eats and get a notice when they deliver the food, since only about 5% of the drivers will ring the bell. I turned the notifications off because I kept getting advertising pushed to my phone.